


Homesick

by homesicklaine



Category: Glee
Genre: 1970s, Alternate Universe - 1970s, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Gay Character, Canon Gay Relationship, Drama & Romance, Eventual Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gay, Gay Male Character, Kurt Hummel & Santana Lopez Friendship, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Mentioned Rachel Berry, Mentioned Sam Evans, Non-Graphic Smut, Slow Burn, Teen Romance, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:01:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 61,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24183304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homesicklaine/pseuds/homesicklaine
Summary: Kurt Hummel has never really had a friend before (unless you count his parents, which, at this point, he does). Expecting another summer of reading alone in the trees outside of his house, Kurt is surprised when he collides with the new boy in town, Blaine Anderson.Blaine knows that there's an unspoken deadline hanging over him, cursed by the events of April 1977, but when he meets Kurt, he knows he has to find out everything he can about him and his magic words before he doesn't have the chance.In the end, will they both be left with the pit of homesickness in their stomachs?
Relationships: Blaine Anderson & Quinn Fabray, Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel, Blaine Anderson/Sam Evans, Burt Hummel/Kurt's Mother, Kurt Hummel & Santana Lopez, Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray
Comments: 15
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

Kurt Hummel waved goodbye to the little old woman who ran Lima’s only library as he let the glass screen door swing shut behind him, stepping out from the respite of the cool air-conditioned building and into the sunny glare of June. His shift was over, and there had been a disappointing nothing new to read that day. Kurt had gradually made his way through the entire catalogue of Lima’s books over the course of his life living in this town, although in fairness the collection wasn’t as big as he might’ve hoped it would’ve been. Now he played a waiting game. Whatever came overnight, either borrowed from neighbouring town’s libraries or bought new with the small budget the library garnered, Kurt had first dibs on - perks of working the morning shift stacking books, he guessed. 

Somehow, in spite of the sun, it was nearly as cold as it was inside the library. It might’ve been the icy glares of a horde of football players on the opposite side of the road that made the atmosphere cool, though. Kurt’s town was lousy with restless teens searching for a break from summer boredom in the thick veins of smalltown midwestern America and usually that came in the form of taunting or beating him.

From the outside, although he had an exquisitely refined fashion taste, one might’ve expected Kurt to get along with his peers - he was attractive, kind, well-mannered. The simple explanation was that he was gay. Kurt Hummel was gay, and without saying it, everyone knew. There was a quiet tenderness in his hands, the way he walked, his hushed speech lifted by another pitch. Whether it was given naturally, some clearly absent God’s alarm to his otherness, or attained through years of deadly stares and grimaces he did not know. He only knew that he liked boys and that this world was barren and cold in his time for people like him unless you somehow knew how to hide it behind clothes that didn’t fit and smiles that weren’t made for the sun. 

Kurt Hummel, still, was as happy as he could’ve been. He lived in fairytales and tree-filtered light and knew he had a home to return to at night where he was accepted - or, at the very least, loved in spite of. He spent his summer sitting under the trees surrounding his home, wandering through vacant meadows, reading to himself and singing songs that weren’t made for him. It was tedious at times - the only new material he could get his hands on often turned out to be new southern cookbooks and crappy half-baked crime novels, but it was life. It was better than getting another job - that was Kurt’s justification.

The longer he could spend mastering his writing skills the more he was contributing to his future, even if his future was an imaginary whim. Things had been the same for as long as he could remember and it wasn’t that it was bad, but he wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to find something real that he could not find in his words when the universe presented him with a perfect boy on a perfect summer day. 

Blaine Anderson was carrying crates of cold milk from the back of a still-running van into the local supermarket. He had only been in this town for a few weeks, but his fingers had already grown accustomed to the splinters and scrapes that naturally accompany the crates of produce and the paper round he carried to the houses out on the farmland every morning. He hadn’t had the chance to be mocked for his own effeminate cadences yet, at least not by people outside of his family. The money he earned went straight from his pocket and into his disapproving father’s hands to be tucked away for ‘safe-keeping’. As long as Blaine was out of the house for the day, avoiding his father’s ill-disguised disgusted looks and his mother’s worried glances, it didn’t matter much to him. He supposed he was lucky, then, that day.

Somewhere on the street, as Kurt kneeled down to tie his shoelace, a love song was playing. As Blaine stepped from the back of the lorry and onto the sidewalk, he didn’t notice the boy crouching on the ground, and as Kurt stood the two collided. The crate fell from his arms, shattering the milk bottles which ran brown with the summer excess of dust. 

“Crap, are you alright?” Kurt said as Blaine gaped at the cascade of milk running towards the gutter. “My boots… oh, uh, sorry. Let me help!” The two crouched down without so much as glancing at each other and began picking up the pieces of broken glass, tossing them into the wooden box which Blaine had tipped right-side up again. 

“I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” Blaine glanced up at the other boy who seemed to minutely wince at each piece of glass he touched, anticipating pain before it had even occurred by carefully holding them with the very tips of his fingers. There was something about this other boy’s hair, perfectly styled, and the light blush that spread across his cheeks like clouds that entranced Blaine. “It’s okay, I can do that! Don’t worry about it, man.” 

“No, don’t be silly! It’s my fault you dropped them really.” Kurt smiled apologetically at the man in front of him, who he was just now noticing was quite handsome. He could smell the faint and sweet scent of hair gel from here as he noticed an unruly curl above his ear whilst his eyes, brows slightly taught with concern or annoyance, searched the ground for shards they had missed as he bit the edge of his full bottom lip. It was then that Kurt managed to absentmindedly cut his finger open on a particularly nasty piece of glass - too absorbed as usual by charming men to pay attention to what he was doing - causing his shrill ‘ouch’ to alert Blaine.

“Oh man, that looks bad. Do you wanna come and find the first aid kit with me?” Blaine asked whilst looking at the shocked boy across from him who was transfixed on his bleeding finger which was quickly turning red. 

“No, no! It’s fine, don’t worry. It’s just a scratch.” Kurt pressed his index finger into his black jeans and smiled unconvincingly at the young man, who raised an eyebrow at him doubtfully.

“Yeah, let’s go find the first aid kit. Come with me, I’ll take you to the break room.” He stood up, Kurt mirroring him as Blaine wiped the milk on his apron. “What’s your name?”

“Kurt. And who are you?” He smiled with his tongue visible between his lips (which turned out to be something Blaine couldn’t help but fall in love with a tiny bit). Blaine chuckled as he narrowed his eyes slightly and tilted his head in a similarly endearing way.

“It’s Blaine. Follow me.”

Despite Kurt beginning to feel a little faint (I mean really, it was just a cut on his finger, how much blood could it be?) he followed Blaine into the near-empty store and pressed his finger firmly down onto his thigh. As his hand grew somehow whiter than it had already been he could feel the unrealistic amounts of blood spreading against his skin like the damp of sweat. At least they were black jeans, and at least he looked good - debonair, even - whilst meeting _Blaine_ , who must’ve been new. He couldn’t think of anyone from the high school who would willingly help him. Not in this small town full of people who hated him. Any wound Kurt sustained likely came from one of them in the first place anyway - guess that’s what you get when Audrey Hepburn is your fashion icon or when you’re a boy with a fashion icon in the first place.

“Kurt, just sit here for a sec, okay?” Kurt snapped from his thoughts at the smooth sound of Blaine’s voice, his hand on his shoulder as he gestured to a swivel chair in a makeshift and disorganised office at the back of the store. He couldn’t help but wonder as he waited where this darkly handsome person had come from. Kurt certainly hadn’t known anyone in real life with the name Blaine before, and yet it suited him, his slowly growing afternoon shadow and his slicked-back hair darkened by the presence of gel. He surely would’ve noticed someone like that if he had seen him before. It might’ve been the blood loss, but Kurt felt strangely magnetised by Blaine. It was like someone had suddenly come into his life in the middle of completing a puzzle and had managed to finish what he couldn’t within an afternoon. 

“I couldn’t find the first aid kit so I just bought some stuff.” Suddenly Blaine had returned, closing the door behind him and holding in his hands a box of band-aids and a bottle of Aspirin. “The Aspirin is so you don’t pass out on me from the pain, of course.” Kurt laughed through his nose as Blaine tore open the box for him, kneeling in front of him.

“How much were they? I can pay you back.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. It’s my fault anyway. I wasn’t looking where I was going.” Blaine gently took Kurt’s hand from where it was still clamped down on his thigh. He gently positioned the band-aid over the surprisingly small wound on the pad of Kurt’s finger. Blaine couldn’t help but notice how well kept Kurt’s nails were - maybe it was just that he had cut them recently, but there was something about the soft delicacy of his skin and his creamy complexion combined with the significant lack of dirt under his nails that everyone who passed him bills over the counter had that enchanted him. He seemed groomed for his age like he actually cared about the things he wore as opposed to caring about what others thought about the things he wore.

His outfit had obviously been thrifted - no one in the middle of Ohio had the money for what looked like merino wool - but the way Kurt had managed to piece together a white blouse, tattersall v-neck, and perfectly black jeans in this middle-of-nowhere farming town was quite impressive. Blaine couldn’t imagine it had made him rather popular though. He knew what that was like, hence his regression from bowties to muscle fit t-shirts that stained easily and whatever denim pants he could find in his father’s old boxes of clothes.

“Does that, uh, feel okay?” Blaine asked, still concerned he had shocked this elegant boy beyond the capability for human conversation

“Yeah, it does. Thank you.” Kurt smiled despite the already visible spot of blood coming through the plaster. Blaine’s hand still held his, gentle and prone, as if ready to put another bandage on if the first one wasn’t good enough. “Are you new here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.” He was a bit disappointed when Blaine stood and left his hand to fend for itself. Kurt realised he rather enjoyed the touch of another person his age that didn’t involve direct infliction of pain. 

“Yeah, actually, I just moved here from Maine.”

“Oh! Well, uh, welcome to Lima,” There was an awkward beat. This kind of superficial attraction was strange for both of the boys. Neither had ever been given the real opportunity to appreciate another man and somehow this turned out to silently be that opportunity. Eyes lingered for milliseconds too long. “It’s not the most glamorous place in the world, or the kindest, or the most interesting…” _Great intro,_ Kurt thought. _A brilliant way to welcome someone who might treat you differently to the way everyone else does, smart-ass._

“I should probably get back to my shift,” Blaine said, a bright smile cracking his face as well as the creeping silence. “I’ll see you around though, right?” 

“Yes, absolutely. Sorry about the milk.” They laughed together. Another awkward beat. There was one of those moments everybody has where you’re not sure if you should shake someone’s hand. Blaine had been raised by a man who believed in two things: heterosexuality and a firm handshake. The first person his age he had interacted with in this town hadn’t necessarily had the best first impression, and if his father wasn’t wrong then only a handshake could salvage it. Then again, Kurt didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was particularly partial to handshakes, he more so looked like the kind of guy who would become a roadie for David Bowie at a moment’s notice.

Without shaking his hand, Kurt slipped by Blaine, giving him a small wave as he slipped through the door and out onto the supermarket floor. As he left the store Kurt couldn’t help but marvel at how lucky he had been to have chosen that exact moment to tie his goddamn shoelaces. He wasn’t sure if it was a coincidence or some kind of divine intervention that he ultimately didn’t believe in any way, but from the moment his face hit the thick Ohio air as he left the shop he knew that meeting Blaine had changed something, as if someone had turned on a light in the corner of a warehouse, and now all he had to do was find his way through the aisles. 

In a weird way, Kurt sort of hoped the cut would scar. With a permanent nick, he could remember the handsome face of Blaine long after he inevitably started mocking him when September came - he could remember it untainted, perfectly balanced and strong, before the intensity of teenage cruelty set in. It wasn’t often that anyone outside of his family and his now-retired home ec teacher, Mrs Hewitt, was unconditionally kind towards him. Well, it was kind of unconditional - he _was_ bleeding - although to be fair he hadn’t ever encountered many strangers in Lima, his begrudging home.

He had breathed the same pollen-filled air for 17 years and seen roughly the sam faces for those years. You could count the newcomers to his town in the past five years on one hand, so why Blaine had moved here was a mystery to him. Kurt could see nothing of significance here, but he supposed that in some ways that was a sought-out quality in itself. Some wanted to escape to the mindless dull light of the midwest which, as Fitzgerald poetically said, was “the ragged edge of the universe.” 

His walk home was comparatively uneventful. He trod the same country roads he always did when returning from the library to his less-than-quaint family farmhouse. He had found no new books that day save for a new periodical on knitting that some old biddy had already reserved and Kurt was thirsty for reading material or, at least, anything that could spark inspiration in his own writing. His typewriter was a rusted, clunky old thing, but with a spool of ink and paper he stole from his mother’s office Kurt could fashion new worlds to escape to from the sullen night and day of his life. Yes, it was escapism, but a form of escapism that may one day lead him away from the town with one paved main street and an underfunded school where he would be beginning his senior year that September. The universe had the grace of showing him Blaine, but it also presented him with the perfect platform for alienation: highschool.

Blaine was as uncertain as Kurt about why he had moved from his comfortable home in Maine into the green folds of Ohio. His parents hadn’t alluded to any reason except for a daunting warning that he hadn’t had long before his 18th birthday. Blaine knew what that meant for him, but why his fate required answering the calls of the rural life he didn’t understand. He knew his father would say it was something about experiencing the ‘real America’ before its cities became too ‘uncivilised’ which to him meant modern. It’s not like he was missing Maine - sure he was masculine enough to conceal his secret compared to others like him in his hometown, but it was pretty easy to tell from the moment you spoke to Blaine that he was as gay as Christmas. Maybe it was the way he showed kindness to the girls in his classes without the presence of sexual subtext, or maybe it was his passion for raspberry-scented hair gel. Either way, they knew as much as he did. That was enough. 

He was here now. Humbled by packing crates and stacking shelves and staring into the judging eyes of teenagers and the elderly alike as they slipped stacks of change and worn paper bills into his hands, he knew he had limited time - maybe his father’s point had been some convoluted Christian moral. It was monotonous work and, before Kurt, he had little else to do but daydream in the fields surrounding his house and cycling for the sake of it. Maybe now things could be exciting. He could use his remaining time well.

Kurt and Blaine both knew there was something about the other. A tenderness, maybe, or a likeness. They each saw in each other’s eyes a different spark to anyone else in Lima. It could’ve been Kurt’s Bambi eyes after being knocked by a milk crate or Blaine’s black fell-swoop of hair, but there was something making a romantic out of both of them after their incident outside the supermarket. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

The air was stagnant and vibrating with the heat of Sunday morning, its pattern broken only by the birds and the hum of insects among the tall grass. A chestnut-haired boy sat under the yew tree across the path outside of his parents home, pouring over a copy of A Streetcar Named Desire he had been gifted by his mother the year before, the spine wrinkled with the wear of being broken time and time again, much like the dried apricots he ate from the paper bag that sat in the grass next to him. As far as he could see, he was surrounded by the fields and meadows that he called home. They were a sanctuary from the taunting stares of his peers - here he could tuck himself beneath the twisted, cheerful arms of the tree outside his home and indulge in literary exploits.

In the distance a small woodland stood self-contained and hiding his nighttime respite from the cloying love of his family - he was appreciative of them, more than anything, but sometimes he needed the quiet romance of the trees to reflect on the order of his words and to plan the world he may one day live in and have a part in creating. A world where he could wear a lilac neck scarf or know how to use a sewing machine in peace. This place in the spinney was sacred beyond Kurt’s understanding of religion, a place he had taken no one else before except his books. It lingered constantly among the busy space in his head that thoughts occupied and waited for him like a secret lover each night, his true home.

He didn’t notice the sound of the bike chain at first, soaring along with the wind on the dirt road a few metres behind him. The red bicycle croaked to a stop outside the white fence lining the front yard of the Hummel household, a broad yet slim young man with hazel eyes hopping off of its seat with a freshly printed and still-warm newspaper in hand. Kurt’s pointed snub nose, dainty in the shadows cast harmoniously with the branches, peered around the tree, the sound of brisk footsteps breaking his Tennessee Williams-induced reverie.

He only saw his back, at first, donned with a white t-shirt and tight-fitting blue jeans accompanied by perfectly browned and broken leather work boots. He spotted grey merle socks riding up his ankles, school-boy red stripes around the cuff pulling the outfit together. Usually, Kurt would’ve grouped his style under the term ‘thuggish’, but somehow Blaine managed to give a new meaning to the clothes he wore. They were form-fitting and he suited them, confident with a lively boat he didn’t seem to be aware he had.

The boy couldn’t help but watch Blaine as he jogged up the short path to the green door of his home, dropping the newspaper on the welcome mat and pivoting with a small dramatic flare (which Kurt found incredibly cute and cheesy) on his heel to return to his bike. The moment Kurt realised his eyes had locked with Blaine’s he stole himself behind the yew again, trying to calm the heartbeat in his hands as he made the realisation that he must’ve seen him staring. Maybe he would get his beating from Blaine earlier than expected - the spell had already been broken. It was nice whilst it lasted, that single interaction crowned by smashed glass and a childlike bandage, but Kurt was going to miss those eyes and that curly hair which was obviously just waiting to be released from the imprisonment that was hair gel, and which Kurt desperately wanted to liberate with his hands. He wondered, almost masochistically, how it was going to feel when Blaine touched him, even if the touch would be coming from a fist directed at his face.

“What are you reading Kurt?” The clear voice, much deeper than his but still concealing a kindness, startled him. His visions of dirt and blood had been interrupted by an innocent question that no one but his mother had asked him before.

“Are you okay?” Blaine asked, concern ebbing into his voice. Kurt only looked up at him with those wide, scared eyes, lips slightly parted in shock. Blaine didn’t think that he had done anything incriminating, and he certainly didn’t count himself as incriminating in any way or form - he thought the band-aid and aspirin had given that much away - but Kurt was looking at him still like he had kicked him in the crotch. As he smiled at the other boy, who was still opening and closing his mouth in some kind of fish-like awe, his eyes wandered to his legs sprawled out on a tartan blanket that Kurt had obviously brought to avoid getting dust on his sleek slate-coloured pants. This told Blaine two things. One, that Kurt was clearly smart, and two, he was fashion-conscious, both of which were more than he could say for the rest of the people he had met so far in Lima. He felt that he knew something about Kurt, and mauve that brought him a tiny bit closer to having a friend.

“Yes, uh, I’m quite fine,” Kurt said, although his confusion was evident in the way his carefully smoothed eyebrows furrowed. His words had a surprising suave delicacy as he said them, almost wistful among the summer heat. “Are you alright, Blaine?” The tension broke and they couldn’t help but grin at each other. Kurt shuffled over, grabbing the bag of apricots and tossing them to the end of the blanket as he patted the spot next to him against the trunk of the tree invitingly.

“I’m reading Streetcar Named Desire. Well, I’m re-reading it. There’s nothing left at the library I haven’t already borrowed.” Kurt hoped he hadn’t sounded like he was trying to brag. He was used to talking to his overly-affirming parents who coaxed whatever dull details they could out of their only son, even if it was his reading habits.

“Ah, I see. And I suppose you’re the allusive and imaginary Shep Huntleigh? I feel as though I’ve met no one in this town who’ll speak to me for longer than a sentence except for you.” Blaine lay on the blanket next to Kurt, head propped in his hands against the curved trunk of the tree, shoulder brushing Kurt’s hip and sending a sensation like static electricity up his back. Under normal circumstances, Blaine would worry about who might see him (namely his father) so close to another boy, so strangely intimate and comfortable despite not knowing each other, but there was something about the rolling fields surrounding them for miles that comforted those worries.

He wasn’t used to seeing so much greenery, having lived in the city his entire life, and the incomprehensible quiet had quickly become a comfort in the hours between running papers and his shifts at the market. The boys were alone with the grass and the birds and the crickets - that was enough to assure him.

“Well, I think I read a tad more like Allen Gray,” Kurt chuckled, voice lilting, before stopping suddenly to check if Blaine had noticed his implication. The fear that Blaine would beat him had ebbed with the look of concern in his eyes when asking if he was okay, but that didn’t mean he didn’t hate gay people as much as the others in Lima - maybe he just hadn’t realised that about Kurt yet, although he considered that unlikely. Blaine just smiled knowingly.

“Well, you’re not the only one.” He winked, and Kurt swore he had never felt this confused in his life. Maybe he was implying he was suicidal, or cheating on his girlfriend, if he even had a girlfriend? The wink was daring, though - Kurt knew that. He knew that if he pushed it too far he would lose any vestiges he had of a potential friend. Blaine seemed different though, even after only two conversations. Kurt thought that years of alienation had given him a pretty keen eye for character from his practice in observation.

He thought that even here, in the paper-cut town of Lima that made existence feel like lemon juice, Kurt could find someone other than his family to confide in. Maine might’ve been more accepting, who knows. That was the more probable reason Blaine had winked, not that Blaine was in love with him and all the other irrational reasons that were running around his romance-starved brain. He wasn’t even really sure how a romance would work for him - how do you work something like that out when all you’ve seen your whole life is men and women together? Can you model something when you have no role-model?

Despite his confusion, there was something about the wink that startled and awoke another part of his soul he’d never had the chance to meet before. It was like suddenly every part of the other boy’s face became sharper and clearer than it had been when he wrapped that plaster around his finger the day before. The splatters of yellow and green paint in his eyes and the combed lines in his hair and, God, the curve of his lips all seemed so much more significant than they had been thirty seconds ago. The wink was like Kurt had been granted permission to look at a man for the first. It felt like breathing out. Still, he was sure he looked like a dumb puppy as he continued to stare down at Blaine who had asked him for the dried apricot he was now chewing on that Kurt had simply nodded at as his thoughts ran rampant. He finally broke the gaze to look back at the play in his lap which his fingers had been using as a tether to the material world by thumbing quietly through the pages.

“So,” Blaine turned his head to meet Kurt as he began to finally speak. “You do the paper round too? Is there anything you can’t do, Mr Medic?” Kurt knew he was flirting, although he wasn’t one-hundred per cent sure he knew what that meant, he wasn’t sure he cared anymore. As long as the handsome young man stayed sitting next to him, elbow colliding with his and shoulder brushing up against him, he would say anything, even if it risked violence. Or worse, rejection.

“Well, I’m sure I couldn’t pull off that jacket,” Blaine said with a glance up and down Kurt’s body. “Or my natural hair. It’s just the paper round and working in town whilst I figure out what to do next I guess.” In reality, Blaine knew he was playing a waiting game with his father’s wishes, but Kurt didn’t need to know that.

“Oh, you’re 18?” Kurt could feel the heat on his face which ignited the fear he was blushing as his mother so helpfully often pointed out to him. He had never been complimented by a boy before, and knowing he was younger than Blaine and still slightly taller than him was a compliment within itself.

“No, only 17. I turn 18 in August just before the cut-off for 12th grade.” Typical, but at least Kurt knew there was now very little chance Blaine would become his tormentor without the influence of his… peers. “What about you?”

“I’m 17, not an adult until January, whatever that means,” Blaine nodded in response with a short smirk, eliciting a knee in the ribs from the other boy.

“Hey! At least you don’t have to contemplate your life’s purpose for another whole year. As if I’m supposed to know what I’m meant to do for the next 50 off years. I can barely drive a car.”

“Well, that’s easy,” Blaine quirked an eyebrow. “You should be a doctor. Your bedside manner was impeccable yesterday.” It was Blaine’s turn to nudge Kurt now as he giggled at him, finally closing the play and laying it next to him on the burgundy picnic blanket. There was an easy air to their conversation now. They both unknowingly felt as though they were talking to a friend from a past life, a strange familiarity washed over them.

“What do you wanna be?”

“A writer.” The response from Kurt was automatic. “I guess in an ideal world I’d write journalism for Vogue-” He chanced a glance at Blaine who only looked back up at him with a gentle smile. “But I love writing fiction. Fairy tales, stuff like that.” Blaine hummed in acknowledgement and Kurt couldn’t help but notice how his voice sounded like the honey-lemon tea his mother made him when he was sick.

"I assume by that you don’t know what you want to do?” Kurt’s question only made Blaine sigh inaudibly and stare off anxiously into the valley. “You don’t have to answer that, of course.”

“No, no, I want to! I just,” The sigh was audible this time. “I like astronomy. Like, really like it, but it doesn’t exactly fulfil my father’s visions of what he wants me to do with my life.” Blaine almost couldn’t stand the sympathetic smile Kurt gave him, but he could’ve sworn he saw the boy reach out his hand as if to comfort him before quickly withdrawing it. That sort of made up for it.

“Uh, speaking of your parents, how come you moved here? I mean, Lima isn’t exactly job-inspiring material. Unless your family are farmers. Which would be totally cool, if that’s what you, or your dad, wants you to be, I mean! I just mean there’s not really much going on here except farming. Unless you’re a farmer, which would be cool, of course. Cool.” He knew his face must be red then. He could feel that weirdly warm and numbing sensation of blush on his cheeks and forehead. As much as he wanted to think of himself as a master of wit, it was painfully obvious to Kurt that his words weren’t always as smooth as they were in his writing - especially around boys like Blaine. To his relief, Blaine just laughed, melodic and sweet, and sighed contentedly.

“Honestly I’m not sure. My parents just decided it was time for a change, I guess.” Blaine was almost entirely sure that the real reason they had left their perfect suburban life in Maine was because of the ‘corrupting influences’ at his high school in Portland that he knew his father feared were turning him ‘too camp.’ He hadn’t told his father he was gay, but he knew the fear was there, and Richard Anderson treated homosexuality like a communicable disease. Blaine suspected that Kurt, with his leather ankle boots and sports coats, had experienced the same concerns from his own father. Unless, of course, he had lucked out with those insanely rare and accepting parents who just knew and accepted without judgement or blame, or at least didn’t care enough to do anything. They must exist somewhere, but Blaine had only heard second-hand stories from kids like him who had been pushed down by their own father’s old-American ideals and Christian values. No, Mr Anderson was deeply in denial about his son one day being anything less than a heterosexual army brat like his older brother Cooper, the ultimate site of Blaine’s masculine insecurities.

“At least I’ve finally got a friend here, though,” Kurt’s smile broke out across his face in the most adorable way, Blaine thought. “Have you got a job here this summer?” He had to move away from the subject of his sudden and inexplicable move to Lima before Kurt caught on to his suspicions of his father’s hidden motives. He didn’t savour any opportunity to discuss his family life.

“Yeah! I stack shelves and read to kids at the library. I was actually coming home from a shift there when you attacked me with the milk.” Kurt noticed as he crossed his legs and sad facing him that that glint had returned to Blaine’s eye as he sat up and leant his back against the gnarled knots of the tree. “Other than that I just read and write.”

“Oh yeah? Anything I would know?” Blaine said. His lazy smile broke Kurt in two. “For real, what do you do for fun around here?”

“Uh, I just read and write really. Well, there’s the theatre in town and the diner, but I don’t really… I don’t really go there. And the church, where I really don’t go.”

“Really? Any friends you hang out with?” Blaine asked innocently. He didn’t mean to insult Kurt’s clearly lacking description of his summer but he gulped all the same. He shifted his gaze from Blaine’s eyes to his jaw, lightly seasoned with the seeds of patchy stubble, and then to the shining bike that leant against his father’s white picket fence. He fondly remembered last summer how he had spent hours painting the new posts with his father as he feigned interest in his football ramblings, savouring the time all the same. They were beginning to fade already. It had been a surprisingly wet winter and fingers of lime-green mould were beginning to feel their way up the grooves of the wood. In reality, Burt and Elizabeth were the closest he could probably get to friends before he left Lima, but Kurt had already accepted that fact.

“I’d love to be one, at least.” Blaine had noticed Kurt’s silence, as well as the way his eyes had dilated as he slipped into the space of his thoughts for the umpteenth time. His voice brought him back, locking eyes again and smiling at the tender proposition.

“Yeah. That’d be nice.” There were more sheepish smiles to be shared, Kurt thought. Perhaps his summer and social life weren’t a lost cause until college and he could salvage it with the help of an unwitting and charming paperboy. He knew he was forming a crush on him already and Kurt acknowledged the superficiality of that, pushing it far below the line of suppression, but when he looked at Blaine he thought there was something changing other than just his hormones.

“Listen, daydreamer, I’ve got to get back to work,” before he knew it, Blaine was standing up, Kurt following him hastily and accidentally stepping on the near-empty bag of fruit at his feet. “But do you wanna, uh, meet later?”

The smile on Kurt’s face was bliss.

“That sounds amazing. I mean, that sounds good, of course, I do.” Kurt said. It took a moment for him to fully realise that Blaine had taken time out of his work, something he would undoubtedly have to make up in cycling speed, simply to ask him what he was reading. To ask him what he was reading! Where had this magic boy who was suddenly taking an interest in him popped up from, and where had he been before now? He knew that there must have been more to his relocation than his parents ‘feeling like it,’ unless they were the assholes he had the sneaking suspicion they were. If Blaine was as gay as he hoped, he knew that reality would be more than probable.

“Where? I don’t really know my way around yet.” Blaine asked, swaying on his heels as he slipped his hands into his pockets and began to walk backwards towards his bike.

“Uh,” Kurt panicked, because in truth he rarely left his bubble. “The spinney! You see there, down in the valley? He pointed back behind him to the small but dense thicket of trees tucked below the meadow. He didn’t have time to notice how he had invited someone to his reclusive spot, no time to think about the repercussions of exposing it to someone other than himself.

“Yeah! Sounds good! Is seven okay?” Blaine was calling from the other side of the path now, adjusting the remaining papers in his basket and hoisting himself up onto the black leather seat of his bicycle.

“Marvellous!” His family ate at 7:30 every night like clockwork, but he would find a way around it for Blaine. Kurt was sure that the assurance he was meeting a friend for the first time in his teenage life would be enough to persuade his parents. With a small wave, Blaine lifted his feet from the ground, rang the silver bell on his handlebars, and began to cycle down the dirt track away from the house. Of course Kurt watched him - or, more accurately, he watched the way his loose white shirt rippled in the breeze around his body. He caught a snippet of those syrup-coloured eyes as the other boy snuck a look back before dipping over the horizon. He left Kurt under the yew tree, and suddenly Kurt noticed that the air was impossibly still again. It was like the entire time Blaine had been there the atmosphere had consisted purely of rushes of sweeping, cold oxygen.

Yeah, Kurt knew this summer was going to be different from the past 16.

He folded his blanket and tucked Streetcar under his arm and began to descend into the folds of the hills, approaching his woodland den. He would have to clean up before Blaine arrived.


	3. Chapter 3

Turning amber light filtered down through the trees of the spinney as Kurt strode purposefully into the small clearing where a human-sized nest sat waiting for him. Here at the centre of this patch of woodland was where he spent as much of his time as he possibly could. He carefully placed his copy of _Streetcar_ onto a pile of other well-read manuscripts and notebooks, brimming with appendages and paperclipped notecards, that sat forlornly beside the large oak tree at the centre of the clearing. The tree was a sort of landmark for Kurt, like a treehouse hideaway. Without the house part, he wasn’t handy enough for that. 

The problem was that the area had been clearly, well, lived-in by Kurt. Various blankets, some obscured by many autumn’s rotting leaves and the muddy tread of his shoes, lay like patchwork over (and under) the forest floor, woven into the ground. The small nooks created by broken branches on the oak tree had been stuffed with discarded lighters - Kurt didn’t smoke, but he liked to steal his mother’s candles every now and then - and the trunk was littered with thumbtacked magazine cuttings and typewriter script. The stacks of dog eared books and half-empty copies of Cosmo weren’t exactly attractive either. 

Usually, Kurt was a champion of clear and sleek organisation, seamlessly integrated into curated displays of design - his father wasn’t overjoyed by the fact, but Elizabeth Hummel appreciated his comments on the living room throws - but his spot here in the spinney was the one exception from all the expectations he had of his life, which to be fair were usually self-manifested. In the woods he let himself breathe. There was no one to impress here - it was his father’s land and he was the only one who came down here anyway. Who was going to see his “creative” mess?

Blaine. Blaine was going to see it, and he was going to be the first person who ever had, and Kurt would be damned if he was going to let him see it in this state. 

It took three hours for the clearing to reach Kurt’s perfect visage of teenage secrecy and playfulness, inspired of course by the woods in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, accompanied by a trip to the Laundromat in town to speed wash his dirt-crusted blankets and a large trash bag to shove any litter into. He had arranged his reading materials into piles of fiction and non-fiction, prose and poetry, and spread the fleece blankets that had once been besmirched by his carelessness into a comfortable arch shape around one side of the tree. Now there was a new problem. Everything was too neat, and the line of sweat above Kurt’s brow formed in his frantic efforts for something that wasn’t to happen for another - he checked his wrist - eight hours was threatening to spill down his face. 

He had always been pretty easily frustrated, maybe due to the world he was being forced to grow up in, but things had gotten worse as he’d aged. You couldn’t blame him - it was easy to get frustrated when you were a 17-year-old boy with no sexual or emotional outlets, and now that he might finally be finding one he expected the knot of tension that had been sitting in his stomach for years to loosen. Instead, it formed a double knot. He kicked the thankfully until Coleman lantern sat at his feet, breaking the creaky metal handle with a single moment of misplaced anger. Kurt deadpanned before turning on his heel and leaving the spinney, being sure to knock a particularly precarious pile of novellas over as he went.

It was all well and good having the prospect of a friend, except Kurt hadn’t had much experience socially interacting with someone his age without seeming like a massive teacher’s pet or conversely inept. Blaine didn’t really seem to be just someone either. He was cute. Annoyingly cute. The kind of cute that probably wouldn’t be impressed by the smell of rose laundry detergent and musty old books that were owned by a boy, not a girl. He couldn’t really change the last part though. Screw it, Kurt thought, because he was too stubborn to change his entire personality now, and why change something you had suffered for or that you didn’t particularly want to change? He didn’t want to change himself, not anymore, and certainly not for a boy he had spoken to twice. Kurt was in over his head.

The sight of his parents reading newspapers and making heart-eyes at each other over the radio at his kitchen table didn’t really help with that feeling.

“Yikes, can you guys not do that this early in the morning?” Kurt said as he sat down opposite his mother and held his head in his hands like he had been drinking heavily the night before when in reality he had simply been overthinking.

“Woah, something’s got you in a twist, eh, kiddo?” Burt, his dad, said, switching the radio off and placing a hand on his son’s shoulder which Kurt willingly leant into as it rubbed his upper arm.

“Was it that boy you were talking to earlier?” Elizabeth’s voice was almost teasing when combined with the glint in her eye. She quietly folded her paper and placed it on the green table in front of her before leaning her elbows on the green table with her head in her hands like a gossiping school girl. Kurt’s mom had always had an elegance with her every move and uttering, in complete contrast to her husband who seemed to find a way to break something (which he could promptly fix) in every room he entered, and they worked perfectly together. They were both strong-willed and decisive enough to stand beside their principles and yet combative enough to carry amicable debates long into the night. Kurt was sure he had lucked out on getting parents who actually loved each other unlike most of the others in this town, but he was kind of owed that given he had lost every other game of life. Burt gave her a knowing look.

“Is he a friend?” Suddenly Kurt had both of his parent's sets of eyes on him, each of them trying to suppress a smile, and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes and cross his arms in response to their ridiculous exuberance.

“He might be,” Elizabeth inhaled sharply and Burt was grinning. Their son had to smile. “He’s new. To Lima, I mean. He asked me if I wanted to meet up tonight.” His parents were obviously holding hands under the table. He couldn’t believe them. Was he that pathetic and lonely?

“I see, and what time are you meeting this…?”

“Blaine. His name is Blaine. Seven, if that’s alright?”

“Of course that’s alright! Do you need anything? Money? Wanna take some food with you?” Elizabeth had stood to walk across to the kitchen counter to pre-emptively search for her purse.

“No, no, mom, we’re just going down to the spinney,” Kurt said. He visibly blushed when he finally realised the significance of that act by his parent’s reaction (which was to drop their mouths open and share an incredulous glance). “What?”

“You’re blushing,” Kurt groaned. “You know what!”

“Mom! It’s just a maybe friend meeting a maybe friend in a convenient place. It’s normal! I’m normal!” Her face softened at his proclamation. Kurt was _not_ normal, they all knew that, but his parents had built him up with promises that no one was. Turns out that just made it worse. Burt didn’t need prompting to know this was his queue to leave.

“I didn’t say you weren’t normal, honey.” She reached out to smooth back his hair, visibly dampened by the sweat of the morning’s work and turned down the collar of his shirt that had been knocked askew. “I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time. Let me know if you need anything.” 

Pressing a kiss to his mother’s hand, Kurt stood to leave. As easily excitable as his parents were he was still lucky. That was Kurt’s thought as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom where he would inevitably spend the next seven hours tracing the lines of Blaine’s face in his poetry and the cracks on his ceiling - it was better than agonising over whether the spinney looked messed up enough. 

Blaine had just arrived home, an hour before he was planning on meeting Kurt, that softly handsome boy he had met by chance twice now. He let himself sink redundantly into the leather couch in his parent’s living room, the leather of his jacket making a horrific creaking sound as it bunched up against the material. He was too tired to care. He was too tired of this place to care. He lived in the Anderson house, but it wasn’t his home. Blaine knew that home was meant to be a place of freedom and love, and that definition was about as far from here as the moon. The sleep was creeping into his eyes now, pulling him deeper into the couch cushions and daring him to close his eyes for even a second. He felt guilty to admit it, what a life of privilege had given him, but Blaine had never been as tired as he’d been since he’d gotten his jobs in Lima. He was used to the firm hand of his father’s financial stability affording him his laissez-faire attitude to money. Since the April incident, it seemed his father wasn’t affording him anything anymore.

Still, he knew those troubles weren’t special. He knew this was a normal reality, that there was no shame in the work he was doing, he was enjoying. Blaine wasn’t going to let his father use his life against him and shame him in some inane way - it was enough that it was controlled by him. Thomas Anderson knew enough about shaming his son. Blaine could still taste the blood in his mouth, the way it felt seeping between his teeth, put there by his father two months ago. The deep metallic taste had lingered for days and had left a psychological stain on his palette. But he was meeting Kurt - that was enough to shake him from the grips of fatigue and focus on the record player sitting on the side table across the room as a grounding presence. Images of soft Frank Sinatra songs and slow dancing in another boys hands slipped into his mind, but he broke from them as quickly as they came and stood to retreat to his bedroom. 

His shirt stuck to him, tight and damp from the sweat and humidity, and as Blaine climbed the stairs thoughts of those perfectly manicured hands peeling it off of him started clouding his mind again.

“You’re home early,” His mother’s larkish voice rang in his head like church bells right in front of him. She was shorter than her son and her years were beginning to show. Even Blaine could see it was shrinking her even further, that it wasn’t just his growth, and that it seemed to worsen with every one of his father’s outbursts. His eyes were drawn automatically to the scotch glass in her hand, a lazy attempt at covering up being made with those strangely soft hands she had. 

“I’m just changing my clothes before I go back out, mom,” Blaine said, voice automatically softened in the presence of his mother - he couldn’t forgive her for the things she allowed to happen, but he loved her somewhat instinctually, maybe even protectively. He had been avoiding the house as much as possible since they had moved here. Every night instead of returning to his family he let himself wander through the fields surrounding the town looking at the stars and idly wondering what it would be like to be a piece of grass. It was pretty depressing, honestly. 

“Oh, I see. Well, have a nice night, Blainey.” She pulled his face down to gingerly place a kiss on his cheek before slipping past him and heading back down the staircase behind him. As far as his parents knew Blaine had been attending bible studies and “making friends” which, again, if it wasn’t depressing was hilarious.

Half an hour later he stood in front of his mirror, the scent of fresh paint still lingering on the air from the move-in, contemplating what to do with his hair now that he had showered. Blaine was used to the confinement of massive amounts of gel, forcing his hair into strict and unforgiving, shiny rows carved by the teeth of his comb. It was only now and when he slept that his hair freely tumbled over his scalp in dark brown loose coils - without the weight of the gel, the light made it clear that Blaine’s hair was a more forgiving shade than the bullet black it often appeared. Sure, Blaine had contemplated how he had looked before, given a shit about the face he was giving to the world, but that seemed like a lifetime ago now. He hadn’t experimented with his clothes, let alone his hair, in months, but there was something about Kurt that made him want to try again. In one way, Blaine was inspired by the boy’s ability to wear whatever he wanted, but in another, he found him utterly enchanting, and all Blaine wanted was to enchant him back.

So instead of a tank or muscle shirt, Blaine picked out a white button-down, a mustard v-neck, and a maroon bomber. He would’ve added a bowtie if he knew where his father had put them and, besides, it was enough that he recognised himself more than he had in a while. That was enough to put a small smile on his face - here, of all places, in his parent’s house - and convince him to use only about two-thirds of the gel he usually did. 

He savoured the feeling of those stray, bouncing curls on the tops of his ears as he made his way along the dirt track that led through the grids of farmland towards where he knew by the muscle memory of the paper route Kurt lived. It was dusk now, the sky painted a dainty grey-blue now that the sun had ducked behind the hills, and although a melodic breeze played on the air the atmosphere was still and apprehensive. Blaine could feel it in the soles of his feet, a strange bounce and restlessness in each step, unlike he had felt when meeting another person before. God, he knew nothing about Kurt except that he worked at the library and liked reading. That was it. That was it! Why was his brain working overtime to fill in the gaps of every detail of his life - and he meant _every_ detail - from snapshots of neon signs handing over road-trip pit-stops to folded fitted sheets smoothed by each other’s hands. It had taken a small child flicking his arm to get his attention when he had been working at the supermarket check-out earlier. Blaine was ridiculous, and he knew it. 

Funnily, Kurt was feeling a similar way. His stomach had twisted into some painful contortion as he had unintentionally fallen into an afternoon nap filled with dreams of springy curls and deep brown eyes. He could smell the teenage anxiety as if Blaine was standing right outside his bedroom when he finally awoke and shook the sleep from his body - which, when he realised the time, he thought could have actually been possible. 

As much as Kurt wanted to perfect an outfit (he had specially lain out an outfit consisting of grey corduroys and a white shirt with ruffles at the shoulder with some gorgeous winklepicker shoes he had found in the attic next to a box labelled “wedding” in his father’s handwriting) and make his hair look slightly less like he had taken the nap he had, he only had 12 minutes until he had agreed to meet Blaine (providing he wasn’t early which he secretly hoped he would be but also knew he probably wouldn’t). That meant he had to talk to his mother (around four minutes provided she didn’t want him to eat something) walk to the spinney (a brisk two minutes if he was lucky and his shoes weren’t too squeaky) and make sure he had positioned himself on the blankets he had prepared that morning in a suitably innocent yet alluring way (perhaps reading a book?) which, knowing Kurt, would take God only knows how long. 

So he decidedly rushed down his stairs in the same dark grey slacks and sailor striped shirt he had worn that morning, switching out the jacket Blaine had complimented him on - yes, that comment had been mulling in his head from the moment he had said it - for a dark green fleece and hastily tied leather boots. He almost thought, naively, that he could escape the house without his mother’s intervention if he was quiet enough, but she caught him just as his fingers grasped the latch on the door, still on his tiptoes. 

“What’s the boy's name again?” Elizabeth’s smile was evident in her voice.

“You know his name,” Kurt turned and rolled his eyes. His mom only winked and mouthed ‘Blaine’ before swinging back into the kitchen and letting the poor boy be. His parents didn’t explicitly know that Kurt was attracted to men - as in he hadn’t actually had to say the words yet - but he was sure they knew. It wasn’t exactly the most surprising thing in the world, but he still worried that maybe they just thought he was _like that_. Maybe they were even more progressive than he had hoped and didn’t believe in stereotypes. Realising he had let his mental ramble take away a precious two minutes from his limited remaining time, Kurt set that dilemma aside for another day and slipped out of his house, grinning.

As cool as the breeze was he felt the same stagnance that Blaine did, like the air was pushing them together at an insufferably slow rate. Kurt’s breath hitched as he began to walk down into the valley towards the woodland when he noticed a dithering warm light coming from inside, the telltale flickering of the blue lamp he had broken in frustration that morning sending shadows reverbing towards him. Blaine was already here with three minutes to spare, but instead of the panic he expected, Kurt felt a warmth. He came, and he came early. He tried to quietly enter through the trees so as to surprise the older boy, but one snap of the twig gave him away, and the air seemed to move the moment his eyes met Blaine’s in the same way it had that morning. 

“You came,” Blaine said. He sounded almost breathless.

“Of course I came. I live over there, I couldn’t just not turn up,” There was that warm feeling on his face again when he glanced back behind him, except the warmth seemed to extend from his cheeks to his fingers. He felt sort of sick. “Um, I would’ve come if I didn’t live over there too, y’know. Besides, you’re early.” Kurt had picked his way through the trees now to where Blaine knelt beside the oil lamp with an unlit zippo and stood apprehensively, his hands shoved in his pockets.

Blaine desperately wanted to tell him he looked cute, especially given that it looked like Kurt had just woken up and oh so warm in that fleece, and Kurt wanted to say something about his hair, how much more relaxed and happy he looked with it like this, how amazing he looked wearing colours - real colours, not acid-washed colours - but neither of them said anything. Instead, they just broke into grins again and sat across from each other with folded legs on the blankets. The blankets seemed much less important now Blaine was sitting on them. 

Blaine didn’t realise he was staring. If he had been enchanted before with the way the morning sun lit Kurt’s face, the way the dancing shadows of leaves had kissed his skin, there was something purely magic about the way the wavering light from the lamp made his skin glow. Kurt was equally, if not more, enchanted by Blaine’s curls, the hook of his nose, his white teeth poking out from behind his smile. The spell broke when they heard the sound of a bird fluttering away from somewhere in the spinney, igniting the fear that they weren’t alone here, a rude reminder that looking at the other in this way wasn’t allowed. 

“I, uh, I got off of work early,” Blaine said, fiddling with his fingers in his lap. Kurt was sad to lose the sight of his eyes. 

“How was work?” Asked Kurt, and Blaine was sure no one except his brother had asked him that question in the past two weeks, and suddenly he felt like crying.

“It was good. Oh, I managed to grab this.” He produced a bar of Hershey’s from the pocket of his jacket, holding it up so Kurt could see unwrapping it and leaving the bar resting on the brown paper between them so they could each take a piece. “Lots of old women around here, huh? I kind of expected less given the landscape.”

“Oh, they love it here. Lots of bingo and meaningless formalities at the town hall for them to entertain themselves with,” Kurt made everything sound as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and not even in an arrogant way, just in a way that made Blaine feel comforted by the sense of everything. “Plus the crazy cat ones can have as many as they like around here with all the field mice,” Kurt added with a chuckle. 

“Field mice?” Suddenly Blaine was upright, face serious eyes wide. 

“Uh oh, is someone scared of mice, city boy?” He tried not to laugh at Blaine but a short giggle escaped, earning him a scoff and a nudge with the toe of his shoe. 

“Hey, you don’t know,” Blaine said. “Maybe I have some secret mouse-related trauma.” 

“Is that so? Did they steal your comb?” Blaine’s pout was almost enough to make Kurt squeal, but he opted to bite his lip instead. He had a strange vision of kissing Blaine, assuring him that the mice wouldn’t hurt him, that he quickly pushed from his mind before it became obvious what he was thinking. 

“You’re funny,”

“Yeah, I know I am.” Kurt stood then, enjoying the way the other boy looked up at him from the light below. Not wanting to waste whatever time he had with him he quickly ducked behind the large oak tree they sat under and grabbed the portable radio he had tucked in between some fallen branches, bringing it around to where Blaine sat and setting it beside the lamp. He turned it to a pop station and let the crackling sound of a generic, smooth, American radio host’s voice wash over them. 

“What did you do? Library?” Blaine asked as he broke another piece of chocolate off of the quickly diminishing bar.

“No, I… I don’t work on Thursdays…” Realising he had spent most of the day preparing for Blaine or thinking about him, Kurt searched his brain for something credible. “I wrote a poem?” The other boy perked a little at that, curiosity clear on his face. Kurt knew that same question his mother always asked him was coming. 

“Can I hear it?” Usually, he would say no, or read something obscure he hadn’t written himself to avoid the embarrassment of personal compliments, but there was just something about Blaine that he thought, then, he could trust. And so he did.

“Sure,” Blaine’s smile was worth it, but the way he sat up straight and rested his head in his hands in anticipation? That was perfect. “Let me just,” Kurt pulled a piece of crumpled paper from his pocket, bringing with it the receipt from the laundromat cola he had bought, which was obviously some poem he had written days ago and forgotten about. He thanked himself quietly for not choosing to clean out his pockets the night before.

“I should warn you, I’m not that good at English, so I’ll probably have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m sure it’ll be great,” Blaine said, sensing the boy's slight anxiety at sharing something obviously so close to him. And yeah, Kurt was anxious, because glancing over the poem he was sure it would sound like he had written it about him, and now his fingertips were trembling. 

“So, um, okay,” His breath was shaking suddenly and all Blaine wanted to do was reach out a hand to his knee and reassure him.

“ _Winter could not tell me your name,_

_And yet I am sure that when I learn it there will be wars._

_Wars at hairlines and in supermarket aisles,_

_Over contemplations of love and lost hands that bask_

_In purple light, sticky with strawberry juice_

_And lightly tanned from years of fieldwork._

_Two things that are not the same and yet utterly compared, utterly loved and_

_Utterly forced into castes of church candles and dresses that match our lapels._

_We are two of the same suit, doomed to_

_Shakespearean sonnet ambiguities and familial feuds,_

_And yet all I want is your name, uttered after mine.”_

Kurt didn’t look up at first, suppressing the curiosity at whether the absence of laughter was in awe or anger. He hadn’t realised just how, well, _gay_ the poem sounded until he had read it out loud, and to Blaine of all people. When he finally did, though, he was pleasantly surprised. It had somehow gotten even darker in the 20 seconds it had taken him to read, but Blaine’s eyes were still outshining the lantern next to them. That smile? It melted his lungs in a way that simultaneously made breathing easier and made him feel like he was drowning. Kurt was smiling too.

“Wow,” Blaine breathed, blinking deliberately. “That was amazing, Kurt.” There it was, the telltale reddening of cheeks, except Blaine seemed a little warm now too. 

“Thank you,” Kurt responded, short and polite as ever, and took the final piece of chocolate. “It’s your turn, you know.”

“My turn?” Blaine was confused. Hadn’t he just said he was awful at English?

“You said you like astronomy earlier, right?” Kurt asked softly, who then, shifting his body 90 degrees to Blaine, laid down on the blanket with his knees bent, hands resting on his chest, and stared up through the blackened leaves above. “Show me where stuff is.” 

Kurt’s head turned to look up at Blaine, who was the one sporting the awed face now. He couldn’t help but imagine what it would feel like to wake up next to Kurt in that position. “Right, of course.” He laid down on the other side of the blanket despite the urge to discard the chocolate wrapper from between them and lie with his body pressed up against the other boys. That was the realisation, though. Kurt was a boy, and this was not allowed. Blaine was letting a guard down - one that he wasn’t really aware he’d had until now. Sure they were in a secluded spot, but the risks terrified him. They terrified him and Kurt could tell something had changed in the way Blaine seemed stiffer despite being almost a metre away. Still, he was here and Kurt wasn’t being bruised and that was enough for once to feel safe. Blaine made him feel safe.

“That’s mars, the really bright one in the middle of that triangle,” Blaine said. He pointed up at the sky, not that that really helped from where Kurt was lying. 

“It’s less orange than I thought it’d be.” Blaine couldn’t help but laugh at that. “What? Mars is orange!” 

“I mean, yeah, but it’s thousands of miles away. You can’t really see the orange from that far,” Their eyes met when they turned their heads between them, each hoping to sneak a look at the other. Kurt had crossed his arms and Blaine was still suppressing a smile. 

“Well, I’m not mister astrology, so bite me, Blaine.”

They spent about an hour like that. Blaine would point out the visible constellations and Kurt would ramble on making up stories about each character in the sky. The older boy particularly enjoyed his adaptation of the hydra, replacing the snake with one of the older women who frequented Blaine’s workplace and always asked for her change in cent pieces. Occasionally stories of Maryland and Lima would sneak in. Nothing too deep or unsettling, just simple vignettes that allowed the boys to feel some normalcy in the way they spoke together. 

There were moments of silence, too, but they felt natural. Kurt had felt that before, that simple contentedness when in the company of someone you can enjoy the silence with. He had it with his parents, and with his co-workers at the library. Blaine hadn’t, though. Of course, he had had strained friendships at his high school but they were just that - strained, the silence was acute and painful and doused in rumours. He certainly didn’t have it with his family. The feeling with Kurt felt premature - why should he trust him? What reason had he given him? That didn’t stop it from being there, though.

“What time is it?” Kurt asked, his soft voice breaking the drunken quiet between them. Blaine had closed his eyes at some point, and Kurt only realised he had fallen asleep when he sat up to check the flickering radio screen, only to see his face blissful and mouth ajar. He wanted anything but to wake him up. He looked peaceful now, like he hadn’t seen when he was awake. He wanted to reach out and touch his hair, but that would be creepy and he knew it, so instead, seeing that it was nearing nine o’clock, he reached for his hand and grasped it tightly, using it to shake Blaine to consciousness. Those eyes were even prettier when tired.

“Woah, sorry, how long was I asleep?” He was disappointed with how quickly Blaine withdrew his hand to rub his eyes. He tried not to let it show - this could be something special, he couldn’t afford to act all jealous over a God damned eyeball. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kurt responded. “But it’s nearly nine. I know that’s early but I promised my mom I would be back to watch last week’s SNL with her. I missed it last time and she values her mother-son time.” There was sarcasm there. 

“That’s okay, I’m sorry if I kept you!”

“No, no, not at all! Trust me, you’d know if you’d kept me.” There was something so unnatural in parting - neither wanted to, really, but neither could say that, either. They parted regardless. Blaine stood and shoved the wrapper, cold now, in his pocket, and Kurt hauled the still-warm and glowing radio behind the fallen log once more.

“Aren’t you going to take the blankets back?” Blaine asked when Kurt began to follow him to where he had left his bike out on the edge of the spinney.

“Oh, no one else comes here. I’ll probably be back tomorrow anyway.” The way Kurt titled on his feet was just another thing that made Blaine want to throw social norms out the window. 

“Do you maybe want to meet again tomorrow?” Blaine’s words spilt out without even really thinking about whether he was busy or whether his parents had some ridiculous thing for him to do the following night. He just asked because he wanted to and even if Kurt said no the pleasantly surprised look on his face more than made up for it.

“I would love to!” Kurt said as he resisted the urge to hug this boy he really barely knew. They both happily stared for a moment.

“Same time?”

“Yep!” That beat passed and they both silently thought that they had missed their opportunity for a hug. With a lingering and wavering smile, Blaine climbed on his bicycle before realising he had forgotten something and getting off again, much to Kurt’s surprise. Maybe he had suddenly had a change of heart on the whole beating-Kurt-up thing, or perhaps he was going to get his kiss, or just maybe he had forgotten to show Kurt some vitally important constellation that would reveal to him why he had been given this beautiful boy he wasn’t allowed to touch. 

“Do you want me to walk you home?” Kurt’s dreamy sigh was unfortunately audible.

“I only live over there-”

“Still! Don’t want you getting snatched up by wolves now, do we?” Suddenly Blaine seemed different - that tensity he had had as they lay on the blanket earlier that night was completely gone. What Kurt hadn’t realised was that Blaine had suddenly thought that if he acted overly masculine he could get away with calling Kurt just a friend and still be able to touch him, so in the most unnatural move ever he swung an arm around Kurt’s delicate but broad shoulders and began to lead him up through the grass as he tugged his bike by the handlebars beside him. It took Kurt a moment to get anything witty out.

“Well, you’re the short one. If anyone needs protection from wolves it’s you.” Kurt wasn’t anxious when Blaine stopped them and gave him a look. Sure, Blaine could be some sort of threat to him still (he wasn’t sure why he still thought that given that the boy hadn’t given him even a trace of a reason to, but he did) but they were now within eyeshot of the place where Burt Hummel lived, and Kurt knew that if he so much as gave him a playful shove gone too far that his father wouldn’t be afraid to confront Blaine from the window where he was inevitably sitting with a cup of coffee waiting for his son to return home. Burt had every reason to be worried. Kurt hadn’t done much in the way of socialising in years, and on those occasions, Kurt had ended up with stitches in the emergency room he had been spending time with other people his age, after all. 

Blaine didn’t so much as bat a mean eye, though. He rolled his eyes and walked Kurt to the end of the path of his front yard, reluctantly removing his arm only when it was necessary for him to climb on his bike properly this time. When he cycled off he didn’t look back. He knew that he hadn’t seen Kurt for the last time, he would see him at seven tomorrow, and something told him that wouldn’t be the last time either. 

Of course, Burt had questions when his son walked through the door, and as much as Kurt wanted to answer them, the anxiety had suddenly peaked. It wasn’t Blaine’s fault - Blaine had been perfect. It was the fact that he never could have kissed Blaine on his front doorstep, or invited him in to meet his parents, or taken his hand back when he had let go. It wasn’t that he hadn’t done that, or that he couldn’t wait to, it was that the possibility was being denied to him before he could even think about doing it. The reality of where he was in time suddenly and unknowingly hit, and suddenly he was vomiting in the kitchen sink, the sound of his mother pausing SNL in the background and the comfort from his father’s mouth mingling behind him. This friendship wasn’t going to be easy.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *WARNING* please check the note at the end of the chapter for the content warning - trying to avoid spoilers!

Kurt still felt sick the next morning. Strangely, it felt like his blood had turned into honey, slowly moving around his body and dragging him ten feet behind, face down on the pavement. He had spent half the night, somehow paler than usual, staring at his ceiling with the image of Blaine’s face burned into his field of vision. He wasn’t sure why, why this had changed something so deep and innate inside of him, but it had. He felt transparent. Blaine was just a boy, just a new friend, that was it - why was it that now Kurt had finally gotten what he had wanted for so many years he was going to ruin it by forming a meaningless and ill-fated crush? 

When he woke that Friday he could feel the bags beneath his eyes, but he nevertheless dressed in what he hoped would impress Blaine later that evening. He wanted to make sure he was wearing something at least mildly put-together in case he didn’t have a chance to change again. Pairing a white collarless shirt with black skinny jeans covered in strangely placed zips and a tight-fitting tan cardigan he had taken from his mother’s closet, all pulled together by a pearl brooch pinned under his Adam’s apple, Kurt felt confidence above the sickness. It was confusing, to say the least, and he wasn’t sure where or why these emotions had come about. He repeated his new mantra under his breath - _Blaine is just a friend_. 

When he walked through the doors to the Lima library later that morning, stomach empty except for the two cups of coffee he had nearly chugged when his father offered him the pot, his co-worker Allison was pleasantly surprised he was early for his shift. That was until a little girl sitting at one of the tables near the entrance asked him why he was wearing girl clothes, to which Kurt simply smiled awkwardly before darting towards the information desk to clock in. It’s not like he wasn’t used to smiling it off and, besides, kids were kids. 

“She kind of has a point, you know, dear,” Allison looked Kurt up and down from the other side of the desk. Kurt resisted the urge to scoff - at least he wasn’t trying to pull off a tie-dye maxi-skirt and a _cardamom_ blouse in his late sixties - but simply strained a little smile. She was a harmless older woman, and probably the closest thing he had had to a friend except for his parents this summer. 

“Well, at least I’m not trying to work the pig-tails at her age,” Allison tittered at his deflection. She had a sense of humour, thankfully.

“I’ve got some books here I need you to shelve,” Allison gestured to a cart piled with freshly printed books, spines unbroken, intermingled with others they had loaned from other libraries. Kurt had spent many evenings on the graveyard shift waiting for the van to pull around the back of the library to drop the colour-coded boxes off, seen the empty vessel crawl away again, the yellow tail lights reflecting off of his reading glasses and leaving him in the cold. “But first, could you go see if there’s anyone in the kids’ area who wants reading to?” 

“Of course, Allison,” _You are paying me, after all._ To be fair, this was usually Kurt’s favourite part and it would’ve been today if it weren’t for the fact he swore he could feel the milk from his coffee curdling in his stomach. The faces of the kids he read to when he revealed the fate of each princess or recounted tales of pigs living in homemade houses were golden to him, and worth the occasional glares from vaguely familiar highschool students dropping in to borrow textbooks and snide comments from parents who questioned his ability to read to their kids without indoctrinating them into some fashionable, gay cult. 

He knew when he rounded the corner into the garish ‘Kidz Korner’ (Kurt had insisted it wouldn’t be the best idea to encourage children to misspell, especially in a library, but he had been shot down as too cynical) that those snide remarks were sure to come. Who brings their daughter to a library wearing their Sunday best on a Friday? The pastor, that’s who. Kurt would be lying if he said he hadn’t crushed on him when he was a much younger, more naively religious boy. He had no problem with religion, his mother still attended church every Sunday despite the absence of her husband and son, but religion certainly seemed to have a problem with him. Reverend Arthur had aged well in his early forties now - still handsome with quickly peppering hair, eyes a shining deep blue, and somehow making the whole white collar and black shirt thing work wonders for him. For some reason, his young daughter - no older than five or six - was dressed head to toe in a smart, delicate pink, from her buttoned dress to the tiny patent shoes on her feet. Knowing Allison was watching him, he couldn’t exactly ignore her now as she sat cross-legged on the floor where she had once been playing with a Crissy doll now staring up at him in awe.

“Hey there,” He did still love this part, the wonder in their eyes, as Kurt knelt down in front of the girl, whose father was sitting on a rigid chair by the window, reading his own book, some yawn-inspiring novel on the Holy Spirit. “Would you like me to read you a story, little girl?” She nodded shyly before breaking into a grin and standing to retrieve a book from the shelf behind her whilst Kurt settled on the carpet opposite where she had been sitting and waiting patiently for her to run back to him.

“I like your clothes!” She said, not a hint of sarcasm in her voice, and presented him with a flimsy picture book about pirates before plopping down in front of him and grabbing the doll from before and holding it close to her chest. “What’s your name, sir?”

“Thank you very much, I like your shoes.” She giggled at the compliment. “It’s Kurt. What’s yours?” He fished his glasses from his pocket and slid them on as he opened the book with his other hand in order to sate the little girl's eagerness. He wondered if her father ever read to her.

“It’s Amelia! My mommy said it’s because Saint Amelia helped little girls like me be devoted and faithful,” She beamed, but Kurt struggled to stop his face falling at the mention of devout faith from such a young girl. It was a little weird if he was frank.

“Well, I think it’s a very pretty name. Should we read?” He angled the book towards Amelia, who was eagerly leaning forward to see the pictures inside. It hadn’t even occurred to Kurt that perhaps reading about pirates could be deemed as inappropriate for a little girl, mainly because he didn’t really care. If kids wanted to read about dinosaurs or pirates or princesses or fairies, he didn’t mind. He was just here to do the reading part for them. Obviously Amelia’s father, who had finally looked up from his book, had different ideas.

“Excuse me,” Kurt and the little girl looked up at Reverend Arthur, now standing over them with a stern expression. “What do you think you’re reading to my daughter?” 

“Oh, uh, I believe it’s called ‘The Three Pirates Meet’ by…” Kurt flipped the book closed to check the cover, clearly not recognising the man's distaste for the subject matter. “By Sheila K. McCullagh. Hm, I never did understand why they put the middle initial in without the name, huh, Amelia?” The little girl giggled at the face Kurt was pulling but stopped abruptly when she realised her father was staring daggers at them both now.

“You might think it’s alright to toy with what God meant for each of the sexes,” Kurt’s mouth simply dropped open in shock (it was just clothes, for Christ’s sake), the older man glancing down at his brooch and scanning his cardigan with criticism. “But I will not let some _faggot_ sinner read to my daughter. Amelia, come along now.” The sting of tears hit Kurt’s eyes before he could even process the word. He felt as if the man had spat on him and, in a way, he had.

“But daddy, Kurt was going to read to me, and you can’t be loud because- because we’re in the library!” She pouted and stood as if to confront her father, and Kurt’s heart panged for this girl’s upbringing in this world where all she really wanted to do was read about pirates, harmless enough.

“Amelia, I’m not asking,” He leant to pick the still-pouting child up, letting her bury her face in his neck, obviously near tears, and glared down at Kurt as if he had caused them, leaving him sitting on the carpet, book now slipping from his fingers as Amelia waved to him sadly the reverend’s shoulder.

He had been called that before, he was unusually acclimatised to it, yet it still felt like he had pulled the thread from stitches in a wound. Forty-thousand thoughts flew through his head in a moment. Was it that obvious? Would his mother still be allowed in his church? Was his mother already being ostracised at church, because of _him_? Was he bad? How could he live in a world that treated him like that? Would he ever find real love? Would he end up with a beard, in the end? Did Blaine know? Did he care? Was he the same way? Would things ever not be like that? Why was he so angry because of a word? Why the hell did it matter if a girl read a book about pirates? What… what? 

“Are you alright, Kurt?” Allison asked, now crouched next to him with a soft hand resting on his shoulder. The gentle pressure and equally gentle words were enough to pull him from his head.

“He called me… and he… in front of his daughter,”

“I heard,” She patted him and stood, encouraging him to do so too by guiding his elbow upwards. “Come, dear, let’s go to the break room for a minute.” Moments later Kurt was sitting at the table in the room situated behind the staff-only door behind the information counter, sipping on a mug of lukewarm black coffee Allison had poured him from the pot that had been made much earlier that morning and training his eyes on the linoleum. Allison stood across from him at first, hands clasped in front of her awkwardly, before sitting in front of him with a sigh. She began to open her mouth.

“Please,” Kurt finally looked up. “Please don’t tell me to tone it down, or that he’s right. Please. I know.” Nausea had been replaced by fatigue, sitting deep inside his chest like a stone pulling his organs with it. There wasn’t really anything different about this time compared to the whispers in the hallways and the paint on his locker. There wasn’t anything different about this time compared to the kicks and the punches, literal and verbal. But in some way, it felt so alien to him this time, so guttural and insulting despite how tired the word was now. Yes, Kurt was used to being called a fag, faggot, fairy, lady, fruit, and who knew what else, but today, and he worried maybe it _was_ Blaine, it suddenly felt as bad as the first time.

“I won’t,” _Great, so that was what she was going to say._ “Kurt, honey, I won’t pretend I know what you’re going through or that I know anything about your personal life,” He flinched when the older woman reached out to lay a hand on his forearm, steadying it from the shaking he hadn’t realised was there until then. “And I’m not going to say that I support, well, that… lifestyle.” That stung. “But I support you regardless, and I will try and love and understand you as any Christian should. You’re always welcome here, regardless of who you are or who you, um, _choose_ to love.” Her words simultaneously cut like a knife through his arm, where her hand lay with grounding pressure, and cauterised the wound. This was as close as he would get to a stranger’s unconditional support. This was it and that realisation burnt through Kurt like nothing else. He would still - have to - take it above any alternative. 

“Thank you, Allison,” His eyes were shining, which he knew was from the pain and she thought was from the metaphorical hand she had extended to him, and he stood to hug her, leaning down and allowing her elderly and yet strong arms to envelope him. He didn’t want to resign himself to this, but at that moment all Kurt could see ahead of him was years of falsely sympathetic hugs from grandmothers and other sexually devoid creatures. _Great_. That was enough to trigger an onslaught of choked sobs raking through his body like a serrated knife, eliciting coos and slow oscillating rubs to his back from Allison. 

“I think it’s best you went home, Kurt,” He quickly drew back, holding the woman at an arm's length.

“No, Allison, please, you can’t fire me, I promise I’ll, I’ll change my clothes, and-”  
“Oh, Kurt! No, no, not at all. I just don’t think it’s best for you to be here when you’re in this state is all.” Kurt gulped as she brushed a piece of hair dislodged in his moment of weakness from his face behind the delicate shell of his ear, tainted a pretty rose shade, before nodding in agreement. _More like defeat_ , Kurt thought. 

That’s how he felt as he trudged along the dirt track back to his home, kicking rocks in front of him with little regard for scuffing his shoes - defeated. How could he have let himself be so bothered by something that felt almost ritualistic at this point? Maybe it had been the shock of it all, the absence of constant glares except those from the sun had made him weak, prone to the driving force behind words that had become blunt during the academic year. _No,_ Kurt thought, _you know why it bothers you now. Don’t play stupid._ He had met Blaine on Wednesday - it was Friday now. He didn’t even know if he was that way inclined. He probably just saw Kurt as a charity case, although he hadn’t noticed any of the pity he usually found in his father’s in Blaine’s shining eyes. Kurt had tried to forget what colour they were last night to no avail - that shade of golden brown had stained his brain whether he liked it or not. 

Kurt didn’t even try to stop the dust cloud following the blue pickup approaching him along the road from ruining his clothes. What did it matter what he looked like if Blaine was going to end up like everyone else in this shitty backwards town? There had to be somewhere, someday, where things would be different, even in Lima. Somewhere he could have a crush without fear besides the fear of rejection. Kurt had never wanted to kick a tree before, but as he walked past the yew outside his house, shrouding the building in summery shadows and rustling mystically in the light breeze like something out of a fairytale, the vitriol built behind his limbs and before he knew it he had dropped his coat and messenger bag to the floor to do just that. Of course, the tree didn’t move - it felt good to try, to pour 17 years of frustration into each swift movement and drawing of his legs and, now, fists. He was so consumed by it that he didn’t hear the sound of Burt Hummel, who had been watching confused at his son’s early arrival from the kitchen window, calling his name and running down the path to restrain him. He also didn’t hear himself crying.

“Kurt, Kurt, hey,” Burt was shocked, to say the least, and it showed in his face when he grabbed Kurt by the shoulders and held him in front of him, moving his hands down his arms to stop them from reaching out to return to his violent rhythm. Kurt had never hurt anything, besides those fruit flies he hated so much (he was apt with a swatter, almost sadistically so), and to see his hands covered in blood, his face anguished and teary, was a strange thing. “What happened?”

“Nothing-”

“Don’t say nothing, Kurt, I’m not stupid,” Burt sighed and drew Kurt into his arms. He hadn’t realised how tall his son had gotten, how perfectly he could rest his chin on his shoulder without leaning down anymore. He wasn’t that kid anymore, that kid who asked for a sewing machine for his birthday and begged his dad to have tea parties with him when his mother was away. Kurt had bought himself the sewing machine in the end, actually. 

“I am though. Stupid, dad, I’m so stupid.” Suddenly Kurt broke from his father’s grip, leaning down to grab his things and storming through the front yard, leaving Burt standing incredulously under the yew that moments ago Kurt had been beating in the same way Burt could remember pummeling his own high school tormentors. 

Burt Hummel shut the front door behind him softly, following the spots of blood Kurt’s hands had dripped on the hardwood floors into the kitchen where he found his son wincing, his hands stretched out over the sink basin under the strong, cold stream of water pouring from the tap. 

“You need to calm down, Kurt,” Burt approached his son like a wounded animal, hands raised in front of him and head leaning forward before turning off the tap and gesturing for him to sit, igniting another wave of unfounded anger in Kurt.

“Why? What difference is it going to make if I calm down or not? Who fucking cares?” Kurt turned to his father, blood-stained water dripping beside his clenched fists, jaw set, not caring enough that he had sworn at his father. That stupid song from the film Gypsy - what was it, Rose’s Turn? - played on the radio in the background. 

“I care! Your mom cares! Jesus, Kurt, what is going on with you? Why are you home so early anyway?” Burt tried to suppress the anger - something was wrong here. It was difficult, though. Kurt wasn’t like this. Kurt was his sweet, funny, cynical boy. Why did he suddenly seem so broken? What, or who did this? Kurt abruptly sat at the kitchen table, splaying his hands out like a child and staring at the self-inflicted gashes on his knuckles.

“Hey, kid,” Burt pulled the chair next to him out and perched, facing his son, his favourite person in this world, so filled with emotion he swore he had never seen before. “Let me see your hands.” He extended a hand, noticing how short and rough they were compared to the long, slender fingers Kurt had inherited from his mother. 

“They’re fine.” The anger was gone now - Kurt just sounded _sad_ , sadder than he had been when his childhood dog died even. Sad and tired, ambition gone from his eyes, Burt was scared he couldn’t recognise him anymore. 

“Well, the floor outside seems to think otherwise.” The snark usually would’ve caused Kurt to smirk at least, but his eyes remained dead set on his fingers. They had started bleeding again, the red running between the crevices in his skin, making it look almost lacy, which Kurt thought was ironic. He allowed his father to stand, the sound of the chair scraping against the floor somehow making the pain worse, and retrieve the first aid kid. He allowed him to clean his hands with iodine, hissing slightly at the contact with broken skin, and to wrap bandages around his fingers like he had done when he was a child learning to ride a bike. The white cotton looked stark against the pale pink Band-Aid Blaine had given him earlier that week, guaranteeing him more scars than he bargained for. Why was it always his hands? “So, you gonna tell me why you were giving that tree a hard time or am I gonna have to ask it myself?” Burt wasn’t sure he wanted to know, part of him wanting to believe nothing had happened, but the other louder side was ready to defend his son to the grave.

“Someone at the library called me a… called me a faggot.” Kurt said, shame flavouring his words like smoke. Burt was quick to react.

“Hey, we don’t use that word in this house,” Sure, he lived in a homophobic society, but that didn’t mean it had to stay that way. 

“I wasn’t using it! I was just quoting him!” 

“So it was a guy?” It might’ve been funny under different circumstances how quickly Burt was willing to deduce the identity of this man who had obviously cut Kurt to his core, but neither of them smiled.

“Ugh, you’re insufferable,” Kurt rolled his eyes, resting his head between his hands on the table, almost as if praying. Another small irony. Burt reached to squeeze his shoulder.

“No, I just care when someone screws around with my son,” Kurt finally met his eye with a weak smile. “So, who was it?” But it left just as quickly.

“I don’t know him.” 

“Everyone knows everyone around here, Kurt, who was it?” Besides this obvious lie, Kurt had an awful tell of looking down to the corner of his eyes whenever he evaded the truth. His dad truly knew him too well, but he supposed it was better to tell him outright than to see Burt stalking around town protectively for the next week as he had done so many times in the past.

“Reverend Arthur.” The words hung in front of them, the implications of the title clear. Burt knew the man well, had dined at his home on Easter Sunday, even, and although he had learnt to accept the casual transgressions he heard against people like his son on a day to day basis in 1977 conservative America, being this outright towards his boy? That was too far, too much for him to take.

“That little-” Burt began.

“Don’t, dad, mom still goes to church, even if we don’t. I don’t want… this to affect her.” The unspoken burden was heavy on both of their shoulders. Kurt had never said it - that he was gay - but they all knew. They must’ve all known. For now, it was easier to leave it in the subtext, but as time went on Kurt was more and more tired of denying himself the chance to say those words, and as the blood began to seep through the bandages on his hands and turn them a reddish-brown, he knew.

“So…” Burt was the one who broke the silence.

“So.” He took a breath.

“Do you wanna-”

“I’m gay, dad.” Suddenly it was no longer an accompaniment but a melody in a minor key. That feeling of defeat, of fear of the unknown, ran through his veins again.

“Kurt, I know.” Kurt didn’t look up surprised, because he wasn’t at all surprised, but he mustered enough courage to look up in curiosity. “I’ve known since you were six when you asked me why that same asshole reverend made you feel all funny. Let me tell you, I thought he had done something to you and I was just as ready to choke him out as I am right now, but you just wanted to know why you liked him in the way Tony and Maria did. I guess the West Side Story phase might’ve given me a clue, too.” Burt chuckled, but Kurt didn’t seem convinced that all it took were those words to reassure him that his father wasn’t going anywhere.

“And?” The bitterness in his voice hardened Burt’s heart for a second, the knowledge of his son’s pain and years of anticipation building behind his eyes. He would not cry.

“And what? I still love you, Kurt, we both know that. I know that stuff isn’t easy for kids... kids like you. Hell, it’s not even legal for kids like you here-” He began, ready to launch into a monologue about acceptance that he was sure he had practised hundreds of times over the past decade.

“How do you know that?” Now Kurt was shocked - did his father care that much about him, his welfare, his safety, to know the law? When he asked those questions in his head it seemed obvious. Kurt knew his dad loved him, but he didn’t quite know how unconditional that love was. 

“I may have done some reading. Did you know in March President Carter had representatives from the National Gay Task Force come to the White House?” Burt smiled, wanting to reach into his son's eyes and bring out the blue from the faded grey again, but Kurt’s face had fallen again.

“What, to beat them?” Kurt said, cynicism ever the fashionable coping mechanism.

“No, to hear them out. To make some progress. It’s not all bad, Kurt. Things are changing, slowly, sure, but I promise they’re changing. And no one, God damn no one, is going to stop my son from being exactly who he is.” Now his heart was being pulled up again, tugged on by Burt’s words. He really, _really_ wanted him to be right. “Your job is to be yourself, and my job is to love you no matter what.” Kurt let the tears spill over, mentally convincing himself they were from the pain and not from the emotion.

Unable to actually do that, though, he launched himself forwards and into his father’s open arms. “Thank you, dad.” 

“Of course, Kurt.” Burt let himself hug his son back, as tightly as he felt was needed to convince him that everything he said was the truth. Eventually, Kurt drew back, knowing his dad wouldn’t stop any time soon, and wiped the tears with a piece of gauze left on the table (he wasn’t going to sacrifice this cardigan after it had withstood so much today). 

“I don’t know why it affected me so much this time. I’m used to it, you know? We’ve been to the hospital and cleaned enough wounds to know that. It just hurt… more.” He pressed his mouth into his palm, elbow propped on the table when he swung away from Burt to face forwards again, closing himself off once more. He wouldn’t let him do that this time.

“And you know what, Kurt? You’re just as strong as you were all those times. I wish you didn’t have to be, but you are. You’re the strongest person I know.” He didn’t need to touch his son to get the message across, but the comforting hand on Kurt’s shoulder blade was helpful all the same. Kurt forced a smile, finally allowing himself to let out a small laugh when he saw the impressed glint in his dad’s eyes.

“I think it might have something to do with that boy.” He sighed, picking at his cuticles. Suddenly Burt’s mouth was dry. He was out of his depth now, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.

“Blaine?” He thanked God he had remembered his name at least.

“Yeah,” The sheepish smile on Kurt’s face propelled him forward. _Just imagine he’s talking about a girl, it’s the same thing,_ he heard his wife’s words echoing in his head. They had spoken about this before, about the inevitability of Kurt’s sexuality, about how they would deal with it. Burt was glad he had the wife he did.

“Well,” Kurt looked up, curious, and the pressure grew. “If you think he’s good, that he’s not gonna hurt or judge you, then you should keep being his… friend, at least.” The two shared a smile this time.

“I think I will.” The two men let the silence linger for a while this time, not needing anything but the faint sound of the radio in the background and the sound of vehicles trundling passing outside their house. Nothing had changed, and for that, they were both glad.

“Listen, do you wanna go get a pizza in town? It’s been a while since we did anything, y’know, just us guys.” Kurt had to suppress a laugh at his father’s suggestion. They hadn’t done anything most would consider “just guys” since he had tried to teach him how to catch a baseball two summers ago. Since then it had mainly been Kurt trying to teach his father to cook and helping him pick outfits for business meetings. Luckily, Burt noticed the apprehension. “Or we could stay here, watch some football. You can read your magazines, but I’d like to spend some time with you at least, Kurt.” The perfect compromise.

“Sure, dad. I’d love to, just… one question?” Burt nodded. “Does mom know?”

“I’m sure she does, and I’m sure she feels the same way as me, but why don’t you tell her? We can do it together, I’ll be right behind you.” Somehow he didn’t think it would be helpful to tell Kurt he and his mother had placed bets on when Kurt would finally tell them. Burt owed Elizabeth $40. 

“Yeah, alright.” Kurt stood, moving to pack the first aid kit again, but first turned to look down at his dad, his amazing, smart, kind dad. “Thank you.”

“That’s alright, kid. Just don’t go kicking the tree again, you might break a toe or something and then you won’t be able to wear those strappy sandals anymore.” He clapped his son on the back, but Kurt had to exclaim at the accusation.

“I’d never wear sandals, dad.”

“Huh, must’ve been your mom, then.” With a playful shove, the two retired to the living room to watch some football game (Kurt wasn’t sure which, he was too busy pouring over an issue of Cosmo his mom had bought recently) and the morning’s incident felt forgotten. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *WARNING* - homophobic slurs, mentions of violence and blood


	5. Chapter 5

Blaine was back to full-gel by that evening. After a scalding review of his lightly curled hair from his father, who somehow seemed to think that one’s masculinity relied solely on his hair, he had been co-opted into moulding it back into a sweeping sculpture. He wouldn’t let that ruin his second night spending time with Kurt, though. He had spent what felt like every second since he cycled away from him the previous night thinking about him, about the way his eyes looked in that flickering light, about his perfectly styled hair soft underneath the wax, about his poem. That _poem_. Blaine couldn’t remember a time where he had ever felt so entranced by words. Looking back he knew part of that was that the words were coming from his lips that looked endlessly soft and kissable - but that wasn’t allowed. The searing stare from his father as he made his way down the stairs towards the front door was enough to remind him of that, of the fact Kurt would always just be a friend. It was safer that way, anyway. To not get too attached, not now, so close to his birthday. 

“Where are you going tonight, Blaine?” Mr Anderson folded his newspaper and placed it next to him on the sofa before standing and approaching his son, who was checking his reflection in the hall mirror. 

“They’re showing _Luther_ at the theatre in town, some of the kids from the church are going so I thought I’d tag along.” Blaine had checked - the theatre was, in fact, showing _Luther_ , and there was, in fact, a group of bible-bashing teens attending, as he had overheard when they had come into the supermarket earlier that morning to buy grape juice. It was a good enough cover to appease his father, make him believe that he was first fulfilling his religious expectations and second, less importantly, making friends. Sure enough, his father forced a smile and patted Blaine on the shoulder with whiplash vigour.

“Good, try to make a good impression,” _Really? No ‘I hope you have a good time’?_ His father sauntered away towards the kitchen where he could hear his mother cooking for him, his brother Cooper reading verse aloud to her. Blaine had to get out of this goddamn house.

It wasn’t Cooper’s fault, really. They had been much closer when they were younger, despite the constant teasing of Blaine’s height and unruly hair - Cooper had taught Blaine how to tie the shoelaces on his church shoes, use a knife and fork when his parents had been too pre-occupied with wine brunches, tune a radio to the perfect level of white noise to help him sleep. They had begun to drift when Cooper hit sixteen when Thomas Anderson had taken the opportunity to begin bringing Cooper on monthly camping trips, encouraging him to volunteer for their congregation, and enticing him with military school pamphlets. Blaine was left friendless - and it felt like he had lost any vestiges of a family as well. 

Now Cooper had returned from some base he was training at in San Diego to help his parents move into their new house, he didn’t have much to say to or about Blaine, at least not yet - he knew what had happened in April. He had actually been the one who had caught them, back in Maine for a weekend trip on their mother’s birthday. Cooper hadn’t said anything to Blaine about it, but he knew he had said something to his father - why else would he be here? A small part of Blaine hoped Cooper regretted it. On the occasions he was forced to pray by his parents, that is what he asked for - his brother’s grace, forgiveness, mercy. He loved him unlike he loved anyone else despite the betrayal - he wanted to be able to call him Coop again. 

No, Blaine would not let those family complications ruin this, whatever ‘this’ was. It felt too precious, already holy and cathartic. He made sure to shut the front door as hard as he possibly could, relishing the vibrations he felt in the flagstones beneath his feet as a result, and ran half the way to Kurt’s house, allowing the thud of his backpack against him to ground him again. He was glad to be so early. 

The area in the clearing hadn’t appeared to have changed since Thursday night. Blaine hadn’t had much time to investigate when he had arrived, focusing on lighting the lantern Kurt had left out (especially for them? Or was it always there?) before the sun dipped behind the hills, but he saw now just how serene it felt and looked here. Besides the inviting blankets Kurt had left out, just as unnaturally warm as before, the oak tree under which they sat had been covered in pinned up pages from books and magazines, excerpts of poems and prose he could only guess Kurt had written. The stacks of books that lay around him like a fence, clearly well-organised and well-loved, sort of embarrassed him. Blaine had never been big on reading - in fact, he could only remember having read one book in the past year, and that book had been a bible accompaniment his mother had given him for Christmas - but the fact that Kurt’s obvious enthusiasm for it made him want to try to read more? It made him swoon a little inside, in a forbidden way. 

He gently, almost reverently, picked up a copy of _The Great Gatsby_ from the top of the pile nearest to him and settled on the mismatch of blankets, letting his back rest against the trunk of the tree, taking care to avoid disturbing any of the carefully arranged pieces of paper behind him. He had half an hour before Kurt would get here (yes, he was eager) and despite being out of practice he managed to get through the entirety of chapter one before suddenly Kurt was standing a few metres away with a happily shocked face, fifteen minutes early himself. He was wearing an adorable cardigan with a little deer shaped badge on his collar and carried a hopelessly cliched wicker picnic basket on his arm. He had some rather gauche fingerless gloves, a pretty autumnal shade of burgundy, on his hands, but somehow Kurt managed to pull them off like anything else he wore. 

“Hi,” He was breathless. Blaine couldn’t tell why, but Kurt was breathless, and it made his angelic voice just slightly huskier, enough to turn Blaine’s stomach over. He closed the book, not caring if he lost his place, and stretched out on the blankets in front of him.

“Hi yourself,” _I will not kiss him. I will not kiss him. He’s not even gay._ That was all Kurt could think as he weaved through the trees towards Blaine’s voice. “What’s the basket for?” Blaine stood to meet him, taking the basket from his hands and setting it down between them, crouching to open it. 

“My mom made muffins,” Blaine nodded. Kurt had helped, but he wouldn’t tell him that. They were celebratory muffins - Elizabeth had, of course, opened her arms to her son at his confession, relieved that she now had a new avenue for teasing him about the boy he was meeting _again_ later that night. She insisted they made something for Kurt to bring him ( _“What was his name again? Cane? Bane?” “You’re embarrassing me, mom.”_ ) 

“Oh my God, they smell delicious. Can I have one?” Blaine asked from where he crouched next to the basket, which he had lifted the lid off of to peer inside. Kurt nodded enthusiastically, trying to stop the insane feelings he had jumping inside his chest for this stupid boy from showing in his smile, worsened only by Blaine’s stifled groan when he bit into one of the muffins. He let himself laugh at him, earning a playful glare from Blaine. “Blueberry?” Blaine pulled the wrapper further down to take another bite as Kurt settled across from him, allowing himself to stretch his crossed legs out in front of him and propping himself upon his hands.

“And almond - they’re her favourites.”

“Interesting combination.” Kurt quirked an eyebrow.

“Good interesting or bad interesting?” At that, Blaine’s eyes widened a comical amount. 

“No, no good! Absolutely good,” He loved seeing that grin on Kurt’s face. “Heavenly.” Kurt hummed in response and took a muffin for himself from the basket, suddenly self-conscious at the number of muffins his mother had stuffed inside the basket. God, she had probably hidden a pack of condoms underneath them all, Kurt wouldn’t put it past her. 

“How was your day?” Kurt asked, once again genuinely curious. He wanted to distance himself from the events of his own day but also wanted to know as much about Blaine as he possibly could in order to justify his growing crush. That was all it was - a crush, just a crush, nothing more, nope. 

“Hm, average,” Blaine considered. “I didn’t realise quite how religious Lima was until I found it much to easy to give my parents an explanation for my going out tonight.” Kurt was surprised by that - where Blaine’s parents that controlling that he couldn’t meet a friend of his own volition? 

“What did you tell them?” Kurt was asking the questions tonight. He just wanted to hear Blaine’s voice right now, honestly. 

“That I was going to see _Luther_ with the youth bible study group,” Kurt almost spat out his muffin in laughter.

“You’re kidding, surely?” Blaine shook his head. “That sounds like it’d be hell, but also surprisingly genius.” 

“Why thank you. Honestly, I can think of hundreds of things I’d rather be doing than sitting through that drivel. Speaking of…” 

Kurt could not blush, would not blush, even though his mind was flush with the alternate implications of Blaine’s words. 

“Have you got the radio? I thought it’d be nice to have some music.” Kurt’s face was too much of a window - he had to suppress his disappointed frown, and moments later he had brought the same radio from the night before out from behind the tree and set it again to a pop station. The music wasn’t the star here, it was simply the backdrop for their conversation. 

“How was your day, then?” Uh-uh, Kurt wasn’t ready to ruin this yet. He had to think of a lie, and quickly because Blaine already looked confused by his silence. 

“It was… fine. I, uh, I went to the library.”

“Oh? I didn’t see you.” 

“See me?” Kurt was the one who was confused now. Blaine had obviously not meant to let those words slip, but his mouth was perfectly poised as if they had simply fallen out like stars.

“Well, I went to the library on my lunch break to, uh, see if you were there,” Blaine offered him a hesitant smile, and Kurt almost reached over to hug him. 

“That’s nice of you,” Kurt’s eyes glazed over dreamily, but he stole himself back again. “I left before lunch.” He didn’t offer any further explanation, and the other boy didn’t push. Something didn’t seem right, unusually reserved, and it didn’t sit well on Kurt’s shoulders - but he left it all the same. He wanted Kurt to trust him - well, it felt more like a need than a want. He _needed_ Kurt to trust him because he couldn’t stop thinking about him now. 

“I actually brought you something, too.” Blaine shuffled over to reach for his backpack, which he had tossed a few feet behind him when he first arrived. 

“Really?” Kurt’s voice squeaked a little, but thankfully Blaine didn’t notice, occupied with rooting through his bag for something. Kurt noticed now that the other boy’s hair had reverted back to how he had seen it whilst he was working, tightly slicked back and glued to his head in those hideous rows. The once light scent of raspberries was stronger now - did Blaine use raspberry-scented hair gel? When his eyes met Blaine’s again, he could tell by the other boy’s frown that Kurt was smirking at something. 

“What? Is there something on my face?” Blaine asked, hand instantly brushing against his lightly-stubbled cheek, glancing around him as if he were being watched.

“No, no, it’s nothing.” Kurt gestured vaguely - this guy just kept getting better and better.

“I brought some beer from the market,” With a flourish, Blaine produced two brown bottles from the bag in his lap, ignoring Kurt’s weirdness altogether. Except now Kurt had fear in his eyes, which were trained closely on the shiny blue labels of the bottles. Did he have something against Busch?

“Oh…” Kurt’s voice trailed off into the ever-colder air around him. He could almost see it like the curling smoke from a dragon’s mouth - Blaine needed to light the lantern.

“Is that alright?” Acting on instinct for once, Blaine extended a hand to Kurt and rested it on his arm, bringing his attention back to the boy in front of him.

“Yes, yes, of course, thank you for bringing it! It’s just…” Kurt closed his eyes, and Blaine’s hand didn’t move.

“What?” He asked, voice as gentle as possible.

“I’ve never…” Clouds of blush were blooming on Kurt’s cheeks as he looked up and into Blaine’s golden, understanding eyes.

“Oh… oh! You’ve never drunk before? That’s okay! You don’t have to - I mean, I just thought it’d be nice. I uh, I thought…” Blaine finally moved his hand to rub his neck awkwardly, biting his lip as he averted his gaze. 

“Blaine?” Kurt desperately wanted to know just what Blaine had planned for a night of drinking. If this kid wore raspberry hair gel, who knew what crazy tricks he had up his sleeve.

“I thought we could tell ghost stories or something whilst we drink them. I- since you’re so good at, y’know, writing. It’s… I don’t know.” Kurt was touched that Blaine had put any ounce of thought into meeting with him - going to the trouble of getting the beer, somehow, and finding a way to sneak away from his family. Sure, ghost stories were dumb, but maybe they’d give him an opportunity to learn more about this blatantly weird, curly-haired teenager who sat in front of him cross-legged and holding two bottles with white-knuckled fingers. He couldn’t resist.

“Yeah.” Kurt finally said.

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah, that sounds nice.” Blaine’s relief at those words was palpable, but he was still concerned he had pressured Kurt into doing something, that it would damage any attempts he could make at friendship before it had even really begun. 

“Are you sure? You really don’t have to drink any, they’re kinda gross if I’m honest.”

“No, really, I want to try. Hand one over.” Blaine took that as a good enough answer and used a bottle opener keychain to open a now luke-warm beer before passing it into Kurt’s outstretched palm. “Oh, yeah, you’re right, this is gross.” _Our laughter sounds_ so _good together._ “But also kinda great.” It was probably the placebo effect, but Kurt’s voice already sounded so much smoother, as if that was even possible. 

“Why do I feel like you’re a lightweight?” He took a sip of his own then, biting through the acrid flavour. He really should’ve found a way to keep them cold, because the ambient temperature didn’t do cheap beer any favours.

“Me? Blaine, have you seen yourself.” Okay, he was enjoying this way too much now.

“Mean!” Blaine took the opportunity to touch Kurt again, lightly kicking his leg and managing to rearrange himself so he was propped against the tree again, parallel to the other boy’s body. “And besides, I know how to handle my alcohol, unlike someone.” He loved the way Kurt’s eyes - what colour even where they, they seemed to change with every turn of his head - rolled back every time he said something like that.

“How’d you even get it?” Kurt asked. He stared down at the label on the bottle quizzically, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t, in fact, tipsy, because he had taken two sips and although he had never done this before he knew that certainly was not enough. He was subconsciously looking for an excuse to loosen up around Blaine, but he wasn’t about to admit that out loud. 

“Took it from the drinks aisle whilst my manager was locking up.” He could hear the self-assuring smirk in his tone. 

“Someone’s a bad boy…” He elbowed Blaine lightly in the ribs, seemingly glowing already from whatever fraction of alcohol he had consumed. Wow, Kurt really was a lightweight. Blaine liked this looser boy, though. Whatever had been worrying him earlier seemed to float away, up through the canopy of trees above to join the stars. 

“Well, it appears to be paying off. Anyway,” He would’ve kissed him then if he’d been allowed. Outside of the spinney, though, the notion seemed inane.

“Yes, anyway,” Kurt tilted his head in a fashion that was much too like a puppy.

“Do you have any good ones?”

“Good whats?” _Oh good, grammar is out the window then, Kurt_. 

“Ghost stories, silly.” What Blaine had really wanted was for Kurt to tell him a story again, as he had with the constellations last night. There was something about the way he linked words together, like seamless sewing, that made everything outside of their little bubble melt.

“Oh, uh, yeah, okay.” Kurt stopped to take a sip, thinking and formulating as quickly as possible. Then it came to him. “Okay, listen to this one. So, there was this kid whose dad was a farmer.”

“So, every kid around here?” Blaine said, jokingly exasperated.

“Shush. There was this kid, and,” He had to stop to giggle and Blaine asked a clearly invisible God for strength. “His dad was a farmer so he had one of those big tall things - what are they called? Where they keep corn and stuff?” Kurt was sort of whiny when he was drinking - interesting. 

“A silo?”

“Yes! A silo. He had a silo filled with corn, but every morning they found that loads of the corn had disappeared, more and more each day” 

“Corn-rustlers at it again, huh?” Jeez, how was Blaine both so funny and yet so freaking ridiculously unfunny? _Blame it on the alcohol._

“Shut up, Blaine. So, the farmer made his son guard the silo that night to see if anything would come and try and, ya know-”

“Rustle the corn,” Blaine said with a perfectly straight face, causing Kurt to laugh in spite of himself.

“Yes, okay, whatever, rustle the corn. So he stayed out all night with- with a lantern, just like this one,” He grabbed the lantern from beside himself and plopped it between his legs, steading his bottle on top of it. “And a shotgun, of course, waiting for the corn… rustlers? To come so he could stop them. It was around midnight when he first heard the scurrying,” Kurt’s face darkened, accentuated by his dramatic choice to use his Zippo at that moment to light the lantern. Blaine’s smile fell.

“Scurrying…?” Blaine was wary.

“Yeah, scurrying.” Kurt’s wink didn’t help reassure him, and it certainly didn’t help his superficial attraction to him. “He couldn’t see them at first, but then as more and more came he realised what they were.” The realisation was solid now.

“Kurt, I swear to God-”

“Mice. Stealing and eating the corn.” Kurt really took his story-telling to another level by jabbing Blaine in the side, making him squirm where he sat, narrowly avoiding sloshing his beer on the blankets below.

“Ew, ew, ew, gross, why would you do that, Kurt?” Despite the disgust, Blaine couldn’t help but be amused, and strangely touched that Kurt had even remembered his fear of mice in the first place. 

“Because! It’s funny,” _And kind of cute_. “How scared you are of tiny little furry things. They’re harmless, Blaine! Exposure therapy!” Kurt gave him a knowing look as he drained his bottle. 

“Screw you, that’s not even ghosts! Gross.” He chuckled, already reaching into his bag, from which a six-pack protruded, for another beer for himself.

“Oh, you’re fine, don’t be such a baby. Pass me another beer, will you?” Blaine looked back at him with narrowed eyes.

“Are you sure about that?” He asked, cracking open his own and stowing the bottle cap in his pants pocket. Something told him he’d be thankful that he did.

“Yes. Absolutely. This swill is absolutely delicious.” Blaine sighed and reached for another one, smiling to himself when Kurt scrunched his face and shoulders up happily.

“You’re ridiculous.” 

“No, you are, you’re scared of mice.” Blaine tsked. “So, do you have one?”

“A story? Uh, I dunno. I’m not very good at making up stories.” He said, uncertainty clear in his voice. Kurt’s hadn’t exactly been Pulitzer material, but to be fair it had still sent something up his spine. Blaine doubted he could do as much - he didn’t really know any of this handsome boy’s weaknesses yet.

“Oh, come on, Blaine! Please.” Kurt nearly pouted and placed his hands on Blaine’s arm in a supposedly convincing manner. It worked.

“Okay, fine,” _Because you’re cute._ “Uh, there was a small boy.”

“Much like yourself?”

“God, you’re mouthy when you’re drinking. One time he got lost in the woods and he couldn’t find this way back to the track, and everywhere he looked just seemed to be the same as where he’d just been - he was going in circles. Then suddenly he saw a tree, up ahead, shrouded in white.” He mentally patted himself on the back for vocabulary usage.

“You mean a birch tree?” Blaine ignored him this time.

“And although it glowed, almost unnaturally, he knew he had to go up to it and see if it was a marker back to the path.” There was a quiet ‘ooo’ from beside him, and Blaine had to smile. “As he approached the tree, though, he noticed why it was covered in white pieces of paper”

“Mm?”

“It turns out that some kid had pinned up a load of his original poetry to the tree in an attempt to ward off the outside world!” It was Kurt’s turn to be offended now.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d punch you.” There was a small, playful struggle, imbued with laughter before the two boys settled into a routine of more serious stories punctuated by sips of second-rate beer and the crackle and hiss of the wireless radio. There was something both boys felt simultaneously for the first time that night. It was unspoken, a clear taboo, but they both thought they could see the other thinking the same thing, unable to take that risk. One of them had been bolstered by his parents support, and the other was terrified about the consequences of the warm feeling in his chest becoming familiar. 

They had fallen into a reciprocal silence, both lying flat on the ground now. Their fingers were inches apart, close enough to intertwine, but neither dared threaten the equilibrium they had reached. Blaine turned his head to look at Kurt’s profile. He let his eyes wander the gentle curve of his forehead, culminating in his button nose; the gentle pink of his lips that were close enough to reach out and trace with a finger. As Kurt turned to meet his eyes, ' _Your Song'_ by Elton John began to play, the music floating just above their bodies. _This song might’ve been written about a man,_ Blaine thought.

“Blaine?” His voice was so breakable, so carefully conducted and melodic that Blaine could only dare to imagine how Kurt would sound singing this song to him.

“Yeah, Kurt?” He didn’t know why he was whispering - maybe it was the overwhelming awe of it all, but he didn’t want to break whatever spell he was under here in the forest.

“Can I ask you a question?” _A million times, yes._

“Sure,” Kurt’s eyes seemed to shift from blue to grey as he shifted his gaze back to the sky, resting his hands together on his stomach.

“What’s your surname?” _Why are you asking?_

“Anderson.” Blaine very nearly fell in love with the smile that split Kurt’s face, but not yet.

“Blaine Anderson,” Kurt whispered like the words were a precariously beautiful object to be treasured and, truly, only his. The curiosity ate at Blaine.

“What’s yours?”

“Hummel.” Blaine Hummel? Kurt Anderson? Blaine Anderson-Hummel? That last one sounded most natural, most cohesive, most them. Except, there never would be a ‘them’, would there? The thought dragged Blaine back down onto the cold ground he lay on. If his father saw him he’d probably have a broken limb. That rising feeling of disgust, incredulous and out of place within yet so welcomed outside, surfaced on Blaine’s tongue, sent a headache through every part of his body. He felt his breathing quicken. He wanted to, but he couldn’t be here.

But then Kurt was humming along to that stupid love song, and the sound sent gold through his nerves and settled in his fingers, weighing them with an urge to touch the other boy in any way that was almost painful. Blaine’s body, coerced by his mind, was in turmoil. And when Kurt spoke, something inside of him broke. “Hey, um, do you wanna d-”

“Listen, I’m sorry Kurt, I have to go.” He was upright before Kurt could even manage to lift himself onto his elbows, and upon doing so he only caught the sight of Blaine swinging his hastily-zipped bag onto his back and looking frantically down at the ground in some kind of starved fear.

“Wait, Blaine, no, I-” His eyes were wide open now, much like they had been the first time they met. Kurt could feel the acid rising in this throat at the thought he had screwed something so beautiful up because of some stupid voice in his head that convinced him to go for something clearly impossible.

“Kurt, I- listen, it’s fine. I’ll… I’ll see you around.” Kurt hardly had time to protest before Blaine was sauntering away through the trees towards where he had left his bike on the outskirts of the spinney, but he was quickly on his feet in an attempt to stop him.

“Blaine, please, it’s not-” He tried to reach for his elbow, but Blaine simply tugged it from his loose grasp. Kurt winced at the harsh movement that disturbed the bandages he had hidden underneath his gloves, and although concern flashed across his face momentarily, it wasn’t enough to make Blaine turn back completely.

“No, Kurt, I’m going.” He turned again, almost jogging away from the crestfallen boy now.

“Blaine, don’t…” It was too late, though. Blaine had reached his bike, not so much as chancing a glance back at Kurt, and had begun to cycle up through the valley by the time Kurt was bent over, leaning up against a smaller oak tree, emptying the contents of his stomach. “Shit.” He guessed the combination of cheap alcohol and teenage crushes hadn’t exactly been a good idea, but hey, at least he was getting the high school experience he had always dreamed of. 

Kurt sighed, slumped back over by the tree now the abdominal convulsions had stopped. Why did meeting Blaine always seem to involve Kurt getting hurt?

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

Despite not having physically moved for around an hour now, Kurt was lost. He let his eyes wander lazily out through the window above the kitchen sink, casually ajar and letting the cold and sticky summer night air into the room, staring at nothing in particular except the void of fields and sky. In the distance, he could see the power pylons skulking across the horizon, small starry beacons of far-off houses lighting the valley like Christmas lights.

From here he could see the main path running past his house, littered with small prevailing tufts of grass and lined with wildflowers that were beginning to wilt and weep as they grew closer to July, and smelled the sweet scent of their pollen even from here. It was still early, dawn staining the sky like a veil he felt across his neck and shoulders, oppressing him in a way the night never had before. Despite his nervous track record, Kurt had always been a good sleeper, but for some reason that night he had hardly been able to close his eyes in the first place. When his alarm clock abruptly announced it was six in the morning he had decided to migrate to the kitchen and brew some tea to quell the waves Blaine had made inside of him. 

He had vainly hoped that at some point the handsome boy would cycle by with their newspaper - which usually came earlier on Saturdays - but instead found himself making inappropriately long eye contact with some generic dust-haired boy who had tossed the paper down the path instead of hand-delivering it as Blaine had. There was a part of him that wanted to see what Blaine would think of him when he was like this, in a relaxed, casual state.

Kurt had lost that air of mystic perfection he held when awake that he feared intimidated Blaine - his hair was flat, for starters, and perfectly soft without the grip of hairspray, and his usually intense eyes were warm with the weight of sleeplessness. Instead of the pristine outfits Kurt usually curated, he wore a matching pair of green and white striped pyjamas, embarrassingly childish and yet _so_ comfortably nostalgic, and his voice, humming the melody of some Ella Fitzgerald song that lulled through the quiet spell of the radio struggling against the din of morning birds, was deeper and more pliant now, sweet and scalding. But Blaine wasn’t here, and Kurt wasn’t sure he ever would be again. 

It didn’t seem too far-fetched that he had managed to ruin something so sweet and innocent so quickly. It was actually sort of laughable how bad he was at this kind of thing. Kurt was susceptible to whatever had been in Blaine’s eyes, in the way the shorter and endlessly more handsome (at least from Kurt’s perspective) boy had looked him up and down, and whatever it was had compelled him, forced him to ask him to dance when that stupidly beautiful song had begun to play.

To be fair, he hadn’t actually had the opportunity to ask - Blaine had cut him off, which was also fairly typical. Now Blaine was gone, no promise of meeting that night, no concern for his retching as he cycled away, and no way to contact him. Basically, Kurt felt stupid and, given that he placed a large amount of his self-worth on his intellectual ability, it really wasn’t doing his mood any favours. That much was obvious when his mother arrived in the kitchen at around seven.

“You’re up early, sweetie,” Elizabeth stood in the doorway, leaning on the frame with an air of elegance, and watched her son wistfully. Kurt had always admired that about her - how graceful she always managed to look, especially here, her robin blue dressing gown falling down her body like a summer dress, her sprigs of dark brown hair lying collected over her right shoulder. Unfortunately, that admiration wasn’t reflected in his words.

“Is that permitted?” The sarcasm was simply an overture to Kurt clearly being upset - Elizabeth knew that much from seventeen years of raising him. She frowned as she padded across the kitchen in bare feet to retrieve her green mug from the cabinet.

“What’s up with you, hm?” Kurt had to restrain his eyes from rolling by closing them momentarily and swallowing whatever spite or hurt he was feeling towards Blaine. When he had returned the night before his parents were long in bed - he hadn’t realised just how much time he had spent in the spinney with Blaine. His parents clearly had no inkling of what had occurred, hadn’t noticed the untouched fried chicken they had left out for him, hadn’t heard Kurt crying softly in the shower or cussing himself out when he stubbed his toe climbing into bed, but maybe that would be a good thing. He didn’t want to ruin his parent’s obvious relief at Kurt finally making a friend, or to spoil the pride they had taken in him when he admitted that other part of himself yesterday afternoon. Kurt didn’t want to ruin that with more worries about another dumb teen boy after his head, and he certainly wasn’t going to ruin it with the story of his first-ever drink.

“I guess I just didn’t sleep well,” Kurt offered, earning him a sympathetic nod from his mom. He sipped his tea as she busied herself with brewing a pot of coffee and beginning to take plates from the cupboards for the Hummel’s family breakfast. Kurt couldn’t help but smile.

Saturday mornings had been like this for as long as he could remember: Elizabeth would make pancakes and coffee, Burt jumping in to help every now and then whilst reading crossword clues aloud from his fresh newspaper to see whether his wife or son could answer first. Later, when Kurt would attempt to make toast to fill the gap left by his father taking the last pancake, they would realise they had run out of bread, prompting his mother’s tender request that he ventures into town to buy some; Kurt would happily spend an hour walking to and from town, making a rest-stop at the library to check for any new arrivals. The routine was natural, cathartic and domestic for them all, and there was a silent acknowledgement somewhere along the way that although Elizabeth could’ve easily bought bread in her weekly shop on Thursdays, the alone time for each of them before the long stretch of the weekend was a vital commodity.

 _Shit, the supermarket._ Blaine worked at the supermarket and the realisation that he probably had a morning shift as he so often described in his anecdotes first made Kurt feel relieved at the opportunity to redeem himself. The relief was quickly replaced by nausea, though, because the trip was ultimately out of his control ( _it would be weird if I just said no, wouldn’t it? And then we wouldn’t have any bread?_ ) and he didn’t deal too well with things he couldn’t actively monitor.

The sickness only deepened when he realised the reason he cared so much was that he really liked Blaine. Kurt liked Blaine an inappropriate amount for a teenage boy to like another teenage boy he had known for, what, three days? It had been that inappropriate liking that had clearly scared him off because it had to be painfully obvious by now. Jesus, he had asked him what his _surname_ was. What sort of images did he expect that to elicit?

“Kurt?” He was pulled back into the kitchen by the sound of his mother’s voice sitting across the table. It wasn’t uncommon for Kurt to spiral into a hole irrational thoughts and by now Elizabeth knew the best way to deal with it was to slowly bring him back. He hadn’t noticed the right grip on his mug, the dull edge of the handle digging painfully into his palm or the presence of his father who was now making a poor attempt at mixing pancake batter in place of Elizabeth’s careful hand.

“Hm, sorry, I got distracted,” Kurt said as he steadied himself with a sip of disappointingly cold tea. His mother, ever aware of what he was doing, slid a new mug of fresh coffee across the table towards him like magic. He gratefully accepted with a small smile.

“I could tell, you seem to be doing that more recently,” She reached out a hand towards him, gingerly placing it over his which instantly turned to hold it like a lifeline. “Did something happen last night, with Blaine?” Kurt didn’t want to worry her and he _certainly_ didn’t want to give Burt, who was now clearly eavesdropping, a reason to hunt Blaine down. He had never really cared about this before, but he didn’t want to embarrass himself. His eyes caught on the empty picnic basket sitting in the corner of the counter, once filled with the muffins Blaine had enjoyed so much. He decided to focus on the events before the vomiting and storming off - blissful ignorance had to be better than the harsh truth, and it would be easier to lie through his teeth that way.

“No, not at all,” Elizabeth perceivably relaxed, but her eyes seemed unconvinced. “He loved the muffins. I had to clue him in on the almond - but he liked it, I think.” Kurt’s wink was enough to do the trick, his mom breaking into an overzealous smile and very nearly clapping in excitement. 

“Well, I will have to make you something else for tonight, then. Maybe lemon bars?” She stood from the table and turned back to find a baking book from the shelves lining the kitchen. Kurt gulped against a taught smile, unable to extinguish his doting mother’s excitement despite the painful fact that there wouldn’t _be_ a tonight.

“Mom, you don’t have to do that,” Of course, with a mischievous glint in her eye, Elizabeth Hummel simply insisted in that lovably motherly way that, for the first time ever, was filling Kurt with dread instead of joy.

“Besides, your dad and I were talking.” She elbowed Burt, who was absorbed in flipping malformed pancakes and so that he turned with a startled ‘hm’ and haphazardly settled the pan on the stove. 

“Yeah, Kurt, we wondered if you wanted us to move dinner to six-thirty so you can, y’know, see your friend and still eat with us,” Burt smiled at his son and drew an arm around Elizabeth, who looked down at him with a similarly simpering expression. Kurt’s stomach twisted a little. Why did his parents have to be so generous right now?

“That would be great,” Kurt sipped his coffee to cover his grimace at his parents’ ill-concealed high-five. He hoped with every part of him that he could explain the situation from last night away and that it could all go back to platonic normalcy. I mean, the fact that he was still so concerned about what Blaine thought even after he had left him sick to his stomach said a lot about his desperation, but now wasn’t really the time for self-examination. That would come later when the self-hatred kicked in.

Breakfast proceeded much as expected. Kurt and Elizabeth answered simultaneously to Burt’s request for assistance with his crossword clue - _‘six letters, the surname of Southern family from Williams’ seminal play’_ \- and Kurt inevitably lost his rights to the last pancake when his father slid it from his plate, taking advantage of his son’s distracted watching out the window each time a bike cycled past the house. Burt’s silence at breakfast that morning sort of made him think that maybe he did know something had happened with Blaine, but he doubted he would say anything about it in front of his mom. He would save the cutting words for Blaine. For as long as he could, Kurt refused the temptation to fall into the trap of going to make toast despite the parts of him that insisted that by some chance there may be bread leftover from the week, or that maybe his mom had decided to buy bread on a Thursday for once. As ever, his plans were foiled by her concern.

“Don’t you want anything else to eat, honey? I could give you some money to go to the store and buy some Wonder Bread or something,” Kurt ignored the implication that he would ever eat something as processed as _Wonder Bread,_ and conceded to the ten-dollar bill Burt pressed into his hand. Yeah, he was doing this, and he probably only had one shot at it if Blaine didn’t give him a black eye. 

Of course, his stubborn nature shone through Kurt’s drive to do his best - he refused to put effort into an outfit for Blaine this time, rightfully so after his behaviour the night before. He clearly wasn’t deserving of that right now and, besides, he was used to wandering into the supermarket on early Saturday mornings in only a sweatshirt and jogging shorts, so there was no shame in wearing those very clothes he retrieved from his bedroom floor and a scrappy pair of tennis sneakers he usually would’ve never let Blaine lay his eyes on - the idea seemed like sacrilege. He tried to ignore the fact that he only really wore these clothes when he was bed-bindingly depressed, mainly because he refused to acknowledge that he had any emotions towards Blaine whatsoever. 

The walk from his house into town was long enough for Kurt to doubt whether this was a good idea and falsely turn back at least twice, but the time this added let him rehearse exactly what he would say to Blaine when he found him inside the store. For once he was glad he didn’t live in the suburbs where there would be witnesses to his mumblings. There was also the somewhat worse prospect that Blaine wouldn’t even be there, making Kurt’s mental somersaults pointless, but there was only one way of finding out if that was true - going to the supermarket. Ah, Schrodinger’s Blaine. 

His plan had been to outright apologise for whatever Blaine had thought he was going to do, or at least dance around the whole gay thing as tactfully as possible without having to say the words. When he stepped through the supermarket doors, though, every word he had meticulously planned escaped through his ears when his eyes fell on Blaine standing behind the counter pulling the register drawer open to retrieve crumpled bills for the elderly man he was serving. Blaine looked, frankly, awful. He had a small cut on his upper jaw, which Kurt only noticed because it clearly underlined the blazing black eye he was sporting (I mean, really, he thought he was going to be the one coming out of this with one of those). He hated to say it, but Blaine’s whole rough and dishevelled look was certainly doing _something_ for him, and the unironed company apron only emphasised it all. Something had clicked again, this time further down. _I want to ice his eye. I want to hold his hand._

When Blaine looked up at the sound of the melodic bell to see who had come in and found a starstruck boy with an even more melodic voice gaping back at him, he nearly dropped the change. Although he would never admit it, the times he had quietly admired Blaine he had often thought that he was hot rather than cute, and whilst Kurt’s legs had never looked longer than they did in those blue shorts, right now he looked freaking adorable. Their eyes met for a fleeting moment before Kurt seemed to realise where he was and, shaking his head free, darted down the dairy aisle to avoid the confrontation that minutes ago he had been craving. He wasn’t the only one who had been up all night thinking, though, and Blaine wasn’t going to be a coward again.

“Hey, Linds, could you manage on your own for a minute?” Blaine asked the young woman standing at the other till next to his. She had started around the same time he had a few weeks earlier, and although they hardly talked, there was a sense of fluorescent-light-indued camaraderie between them. She shrugged in what he assumed was approval and let Blaine scoot past her to escape into the stacks. She hadn’t questioned Blaine’s black eye - by now she was sadly used to Blaine coming in looking like a pair of scuffed work shoes. Lindsey just assumed he was that kind of person, hiding it behind his soft speech and sweet smiles.

Further down, Kurt could feel his heart in his throat which, if he wasn’t used to the burning sensations that came with his extensive vocal drills he partook in as some kind of sadistic hobby, would’ve been quite alarming. It was difficult to hide the throbbing sensation behind the pained face he made when pretending to be enraptured by the ingredients in a loaf of bread ( _really Hummel, bread? It’s like four things_ ). When he heard the signature squeak of rubber soles on linoleum coming to a halt at the other end of the aisle, his heart only lurched further into his mouth.

“Oh, Kurt-” But the other boy had already disappeared, abandoning the loaf he had been inspecting on the wrong shelf and leaving Blaine with a faltering outstretched hand. Before he knew it, Blaine was peering down the next aisle, spotting a flash of Kurt’s telltale eyes glaring at him from the other end before promptly disappearing to the next aisle. Instead of indulging this game of cat and mouse, Blaine made the executive decision to run down the aisle (which suddenly seemed much longer than it had in the past) to catch Kurt directly.

“Kurt, stop it, please.” He had, albeit breathlessly, caught the taller boy looking intently at an upside-down can of peas, except now it seemed as if Kurt was tearing up in fear, lip quivering but back as straight as ever. Even if every sense of his emotional confidence was gone, all signs of cognitive thought irrelevant now, Kurt’s body managed to prop him up with some sort of physical assertion. 

“Blaine, I’m… I’m really sorry,” Kurt almost whimpered, and it finally struck Blaine that Kurt probably thought he was angry at him. It’s not like he hadn’t given him every reason to believe that. Blaine’s face softened, and he changed a step towards him.

“It’s okay, I’m the one who’s sorry-”

“Who did that to your eye?” Again, Kurt felt the need to brush his fingers over the bruise in his blood, the want to gently hold frozen toaster waffles to his face and bandage the gash on his cheek, which from here looked much bigger and deeper than it had before. Blaine just flinched at the question, which in turn sent a jab of pain through his body. He wasn’t quite sure he was ready to share that with Kurt yet, but he knew soon he wouldn’t have a choice anyway. Either way, Kurt was pretty persistent in getting answers to his questions.

“Um, will you- can we talk about this in the office?” Before Kurt could answer, Blaine gently grabbed his wrist and began to guide him through the aisles of goods towards the room in the back corner where they had first shared those strangely lingering touches. As Blaine puddle him through the door, Kurt was hit with that nostalgic principal’s office scent of stale coffee and dry-erase markers, adding to the layers of fear in his mind.

“I would’ve said yes, dummy. You didn’t need to drag me.” There was that signature snark again. He brushed down his clothes, even though they weren’t exactly brush-worthy, and crossed his arms defensively over his chest, lifting his head to meet Blaine’s incredulous expression. Seriously, who was this kid? Honestly, Kurt wasn’t really sure why he was putting up the walls again, but he was. “Seriously, Blaine, who did that to you?” The other boy wasn’t sure if the glistening in Kurt’s eyes as a result of his fear or his concern. He wasn’t really sure about anything right now. 

“Can we not talk about it?” Blaine pleaded, flopping down into one of the tired felted chairs with exasperation. Kurt gingerly sat on the swivel chair across from him, always careful not to disturb anything, as if the room was covered in dust or tripwires or who knows what else. 

“But I want to talk about it.” Blaine resisted the urge to sigh - how was someone so timid so god damn stubborn?

“Kurt, I…” He almost let himself say it. _I like you in an inappropriate way, and last night it was really difficult to stop myself from doing something about it. Now my asshole father wants to know what I’m_ really _doing every evening, and if he finds out I’m spending time with another boy again, he’ll probably kill me._ “I’m just sorry for leaving last night. I should’ve checked if you were okay or something. I, uh, I don’t know why…”

“Yeah, well, I do,” Blaine’s eyes shot up to Kurt, meeting his small, sad smile. He didn’t seem scared anymore. Was he used to rejection or something? “I made you uncomfortable.” Uncomfortable? Blaine was pretty sure he had never felt uncomfortable around Kurt. In fact, Blaine was certain the only thing that stopped him from indulging in the urges he had about Kurt was his father. It hurt to think that Kurt was taking responsibility for the things his father was moulding him into. 

“Why would you make me uncomfortable?” Blaine looked genuinely clueless, and Kurt had to resist the urge to scoff. Either Blaine was blind or deeply in denial about something. Blaine was actually both. 

“Because I’m gay, Blaine.” Kurt certainly hadn’t thought he would come in here and say that outright, but nothing he thought was going to happen was happening recently. That was the third time in two days he had said those words to another human being, and Kurt was surprised to see Blaine smiling in the same way his parents had. It sort of scared him, actually, how happy Blaine suddenly seemed, the way his brow unknitted itself and his eyes widened slightly, a fast contrast to the downtrodden look he had moments ago. Was this some kind of sickening realisation that he was about to be beaten by someone who had clearly been beaten himself? That deer-in-headlights look was on his face again, but Blaine only clocked that Kurt was panicking when he abruptly stood in the awed silence that had followed his confession.

“No, wait, Kurt,” Blaine stood to grab his hand in his, a bold move he hadn’t really considered until he realised how sweaty his hands were from work against Kurt’s cool skin. “I am. Too, I mean. Gay. I,” He searched Kurt’s eyes, ever-turning between green and blue and grey and streaked with the telltale bloodshot signs of nil sleep. Blaine was definitely gay. “Yeah.” 

“Oh,” Kurt swore he’d never uttered a syllable that conveyed so much relief and surprise at the same time.

“Oh,” They smiled at each other for quite some time, even if in reality the moment only lasted a few seconds. Maybe this friendship didn’t have to end for either of them. “So, you didn’t make me uncomfortable because of that.” Blaine self-consciously let go of Kurt’s hand again, hoping he hadn’t noticed how damp his hands had been and sat back in his seat to wait for the boy towering over him to do the same. Instead, Kurt knelt in front of him, attempting to peer closer at his bruised eye.

“Why did you leave, then? And why do you look like a pirate?” Blaine had to laugh, but Kurt didn’t reciprocate. It had been a long time since someone had worried about him with such sincerity, and he wasn’t sure how to react. 

“It doesn’t matter, really,” Blaine said. Kurt only raised his eyebrows and cocked his head. “Okay, well, it does matter, but I don’t really think you can do anything about it.” 

“How can you be so sure?” As endearing as Kurt’s kind of sleepy smirk was, Blaine couldn’t fully appreciate it right now, not whilst thinking of him. 

“Because as strong as I’m sure you are, I don’t think a fight between you and my father would be a fair one,” Kurt’s mouth opened in some kind of shock, and Blaine turned his head to hide the injury from his gaze. “I didn’t realise how late it was and I knew that if he found out I was with you instead of with church he’d be pissed. I guess he was pissed enough I was late to hit me anyway.” They both ignored the fact that Blaine’s explanation didn’t exactly give away why he had left at the exact moment Kurt had begun to ask him to dance to an Elton John song. His transparency about this was enough, and it was sort of implicit now. 

“Oh, Blaine, I’m so-” Blaine interrupted him before he could finish his sentence, leaning forward slightly to place a hand on Kurt’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, please don’t be sorry,” Kurt tried to ignore the warmth of Blaine’s fingers on his collarbone because, really, now wasn’t the time.

“I mean, it’s not okay, but why can’t I be sorry?” 

“Because,” Blaine sighed and leant back in his seat, covering his face with his hands. “It’s not your fault. I appreciate it, really, but I don’t… I don’t want you to worry. And anyway, I’m the one who left you alone and vomiting after your first time drinking with no explanation. I really am sorry, Kurt.” He didn’t think now was the time to point out he had spent most of his time the past few days thinking about Blaine anyway, especially given they’d only known each other for those few days. He silently forgave him with a smile he couldn’t see, conveyed through the way he gently rested his hand on the older boy’s knee. Blaine was the one who broke their silence.

“Um, why are you here so early anyway?” He looked Kurt up and down through his fingers. “Especially wearing that?” 

“Asshole,” Kurt exclaimed playfully. “I’ll have you know that I can wear what I want.” He crossed his arms again, just happy that Blaine was back to laughing now. Their dynamic had changed yet again with this new common ground, and he loved it. He didn’t know what to do about Blaine’s dad right at this moment, but he’d do something. He would.

“I know. I like it,” Kurt rolled his eyes. “Honest! But I didn’t think _you_ would.” 

“My mom asked me to come and buy some bread,” Kurt shrugged, and for some reason, Blaine’s face seemed to minutely fall. 

“Oh,” Blaine sounded disappointed, and Kurt couldn’t help but fantasise that maybe it was because he wished he had come here just for him, which, in a way, he had. He didn’t really need toast. 

“What?” He nudged Blaine’s knee with his hand to get his attention again, savouring the deep brown of his eyes when they met his again, the fear that it might be the last time gripping him again.

“Nothing, um, let’s go get some,” said Blaine, standing and reaching out a hand to help Kurt up, which he obligingly took.

“Alright,” They dropped hands the moment they left the secluded office, but both could still feel the imprint of the other boy’s fingers on their skin. Blaine awkwardly left Kurt to return to the front of the store, running his hands over his gelled down hair. A few months ago he would’ve been able to freely run them through his curls - it was a nervous force of habit he hadn’t been able to kick yet. It was still second nature, so much so it was always a shock to feel the sticky and brittle hair there instead. 

Moments later Kurt made his way up to the counter where Blaine was unintentionally waiting for him, smiling bashfully as he handed him the white sliced loaf. Lindsey visibly glanced between the two of them but, of course, neither noticed, too absorbed in each other's movements in newly found awe to really care that they weren’t alone here. Luckily Lindsey, apathetic as ever, didn’t care.

“Are you free tonight?” Kurt asked, handing Blaine the bill his father had given to him what felt like years ago now. He was more tenacious than ever to actually know Blaine, to spend whatever time he could with him. 

“What else would I be doing?” Blaine quirked an eyebrow as he counted out his change into his hand. 

“I dunno, singing in the church choir.”

“Alright, smartass,” Kurt loved it when Blaine rolled his eyes - he did this thing where he bit the corner of his lip as he did it that he had noticed. He wasn’t as scared of noticing those things now as he had been five minutes ago.

“Spinney, then? At seven? I promise I'll let you go before your dad notices this time,” He tried to be playful about it, but the lacing of reality was still there in his voice and in the air between them. They might both be gay, but that didn’t mean other people thought that was okay. Still, even if Kurt was the stubborn one, Blaine was not going to give in, not now. He wanted more of Kurt, even though he knew there was a deadline hanging over them - a deadline Kurt didn’t, wouldn’t know about. Maybe it was selfish to keep going, but Blaine wanted more of Kurt, and something told him Kurt wanted more of him too, and so, as if he were rationing his time and memories, he decided to give himself over to whatever this could be. 

“Sounds perfect.”

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING** There are allusions to OCD in this chapter - it's not explicitly mentioned, but I would like to mention that not ever experience someone has with OCD is like what I describe in this chapter. OCD, contrary to what Ryan Murphy would have you believe, is not all about dirt (and it lasts for longer than one episode but we're not here to discuss that). This isn't meant to be a fic exploring mental illness, but there are/will be aspects of it throughout :)

The next few weeks were spent simply enjoying each other in whatever time they could steal away, tucked in the evening hours they shared at the spinney. The world seemed entirely irrelevant there, away from the eyes of anyone they would fear in daylight (which was most people, bar Kurt’s parents.) One evening Blaine had arrived with a stack of empty pallets loaded into the back of his friend’s pick-up, which they then hauled into the clearing - Kurt watched more than anything, but Blaine let him believe he had helped - and arranged in a sort of makeshift floor they could call theirs.

Quietly, the woodland became shared, like a supplemental softened by the gradual accumulation of embroidered cushions and battery-powered Christmas lights, and the slow papering of the large oak tree with postcards from Blaine’s family holidays and scraps of notebook pages Kurt had written fractions of poetry for Blaine on.

Naturally, they had slowly learnt more about each other’s families. Blaine knew and silently tried not to envy Kurt’s impossibly supportive parents, heard stories of their indulgence in his childhood tea parties and the debacle of his coming out after the events of that Friday morning that, by now, seemed an eternity ago. Two weeks suddenly felt like the suggestion of a lifetime spent together. Kurt had listened, bound by the societal limits of his caring, to Blaine’s accounts of familial suppression and relentless teasing (so, basically, abuse) and decided that, without even meeting him, he hated Thomas Anderson.

On multiple occasions, Blaine had skirted around the topic of what had prompted the Andersons move to Lima, a taboo event that Kurt had inferred had happened earlier in April. He didn’t push the topic, not wanting to break the unspoken equilibrium of whatever they were making together - he trusted that Blaine would tell him eventually if he wanted to. He just hoped he kept him around for that long.

Despite Kurt’s incessant fantasising about the future (because he _was_ going to be published, and Blaine enjoyed the sound of hope in his voice) Blaine hadn’t mentioned once what he was doing come September. Kurt knew he had graduated from that second conversation under the yew tree. Kurt knew he was nearly an adult, and perhaps free from the family he was forced into, but he didn’t know what Blaine was going to change. He began to worry that Blaine didn’t know either, but decided that Blaine wasn’t the kind of person not to plan something like that. Still, there was a contention he could sense around the subject of the future, so, again, Kurt left it to time. 

It was part of the mutual understanding they had developed of each other’s boundaries without having to discuss them. Kurt’s sometimes, well, _odd_ habits, which both suspected might have been in some way disordered and unregulated, and Blaine’s sudden periods of flighty anxiety and days of unexplained melancholy fell into a rhythm they each took the care to learn - not for convenience, but rather because each cared for the other. Again, it went unspoken, subtly hidden in the patience they showed in conversation when one seemed to falter or let the silence grow unnaturally wide. Except, really, it never felt unnatural. They had learnt to put a wall between each other and the avalanches of troubling thoughts that rested behind their shining eyes or found ways to distract the other from whatever sentence had snagged somewhere in their brain. Neither could remember ever feeling as understood as he did with the other boy. 

Despite their growing emotional closeness, it hadn’t yet crossed into any kind of physical affection, no matter how much they secretly pined for each other. There had been a moment that second Monday night where, in a moment of weakness, Kurt had leant down as if to kiss Blaine and was, at the last moment, restrained by his own willpower more than Blaine’s unwillingness (because unlike the moment he had been scared by Kurt nearly asking him to dance, Blaine was no longer unwilling or complicit. It took just as much out of him to not lean up and kiss Kurt.)

The tenderness in each accidental touch and softened word grew night by night, growing exponentially with the time that had passed since their supermarket confessions. Every night, Blaine came out to the spinney after his evening shift to find Kurt leant up against the tree or propped on a stiff cushion reading a book or scribbling, in his awful handwriting, something beautiful. It began to feel like coming home. Sometimes Blaine wondered with sonder if it was the same for Kurt, who he knew lived in that glowing house resting on the mantle above the spinney, filled with the models of a loving family. Blaine didn’t let the thought linger in his head as he once might have. He was conditioned by now to expect Kurt’s gentle prods to ground him back in this reality that was miles better than the one he had been in just weeks ago.

Blaine trusted, finally, that Kurt was here to be with him, no ulterior motives. 

The roles switched, just slightly, on Friday the 24th of June. Occasionally Kurt had arrived to find Blaine patiently waiting for him, having managed to sneak away from his parents’ house or lucked out with an earlier shift to surprise him, but tonight was more deliberate. Kurt trundled down the valley towards the woodland, tonight wearing some particularly dapper black slacks, a short-sleeved white shirt and a ruby sweater-vest, a leatherbound notebook tucked beneath his arm as he bit into a peach his mother had collected that morning from the trees in the front yard. They were finally starting to reach that perfect level of ripeness they always did towards the end of June, and Kurt knew that meant peach cheesecake.

Lost in thoughts of other peach-involved desserts, he struggled to stifle his surprise at finding Blaine sitting cross-legged in the centre of the blanket-covered pallets, unable to stop a trail of peach juice from falling down his chin. He felt himself blushing when Blaine chuckled.

The other boy stood, seeming taller with confidence now than he had been in the past, a sky blue button-up shirt fitting perfectly over his broad chest with the first few buttons undone, revealing a small patch of perfectly smooth skin, and long brown corduroys falling from his hips to his ankles, in every way flattering.

What really struck Kurt, though, was his hair. He had noticed over the past weeks the slowly decreasing amounts of hair gel Blaine stuck on his head (the raspberry scent he came to characterise as his never seemed to fade, though), but tonight Blaine had put none in his hair. His curls ( _they’re wet, did he shower for me?_ ) freely tumbled over his head, a few lazily falling above his left eye. He looked anxious about it, hiding behind a surprisingly shy smile - it was clear he was usually the brasher of the two of them, with Kurt being something of an introvert despite his bold actions - which Kurt quickly tried to antidote by swallowing the peach in his mouth and mumbling sincerely;

“You look great,” His eyes wavered over Blaine’s body, trying to take the pressure off of his hair. 

“Uh, thanks,” Blaine scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably, allowing a smile stifled only by the biting of his lip to spread across his face whilst Kurt moved towards the platform. Sometimes Kurt felt as if he were coming to perform a secret Shakespeare to an audience of Elizabethan onlookers, but he never felt the need to perform around Blaine, really. As he approached the other boy, he noticed that his enamourment had made him overlook the presence of the strange contraption behind him.

“Oh my god, is that a telescope?” Kurt gasped when Blaine moved aside to reveal he had set up a relatively large white telescope on a collapsible wooden stand, pointing up towards the sky in preparation for the rising moon and stars. Blaine grinned.

“Yeah, my friend Lindsey, from work, she lent it to me,” He moved aside as Kurt brushed past him to eagerly look at the contraption, seemingly in awe at the device. It wasn’t his first time seeing one - he had been shown one in his physics class last year, seen photos and videos on television shows, but there was something different about being free to use one. In all his friendless life confined to the small town of Lima, Ohio, he had never actually put his eye to the piece to divine from the sky and had never thought to ask for one for his birthday.

To be fair, he wasn’t exactly big on science, but he still thought the stars were cool, and the prospect of hearing more of what Blaine was so in love with was an exciting prospect. Maybe he’d finally spill that he was going to study astronomy or get an internship at an observatory (Kurt had done some research, there was one in Columbus) or something. 

“How did you get it here?” Kurt asked, running his hands along the barrel (was that the word?) of the telescope. Blaine had to raise an amused eyebrow at his fascination.

“It’s portable - it folds up into a pretty hefty bag,” He gestured towards an empty brown canvas case that lay deflated just beyond the edge of the pallets. “I just cycled over with it on my back. It was pretty easy to set up, actually.”

Back in Maine, Blaine’s science teacher had arranged monthly events for students where they would meet out on the football field and take turns squinting through the eyepiece, just for fun, though he soaked up as much of the words his teacher said as he could. As a kid, he had inherited a much simpler one, specially made for children, from Cooper once he had grown bored of it. That was what really sparked the passion for it all, seeing the blurred and minute stars in the increasingly polluted sky through his bedroom window, the secret romance of waiting until his parents were asleep to pull out his star charts and try and spot what he could in the endless abyss above. It made childhood feel less lonely, somehow.

“Blaine, it’s so cool,” Kurt looked up at Blaine, who was standing next to him, smiling sheepishly with his hands in his pockets, eyes glistening slightly. Everything Blaine did seemed to touch him more and more recently. “Thank you. Will you show me some?” 

“Anything for you,” Blaine said without really thinking, but before he could panic, Kurt was smiling, eyes creased, and moving aside so he could use the telescope for him. 

It was easy from there - it always was. There was a kind of magnetism between them, between Blaine’s sincere emotions and Kurt’s teasing wit, between Blaine’s naivety and Kurt’s forgiving kindness, that just made their conversations easy. Blaine had been anxious that the telescope wouldn’t entertain Kurt as much as it did him, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that Kurt’s eyes were widened and alert in the way they always were when he read aloud to Blaine. Each time Kurt put his eye to the piece after he had adjusted it for him to watch some new wonder, sometimes gasping or allowing his mouth to form a small ‘o’ shape, Blaine heard in his head the snippets of poems - Eliot, Ginsberg, Wordsworth, even Kurt’s - read in his sweet-as-syrup voice and was transfixed all over again. He just hoped this gesture conveyed his fascination with him as much as he hoped his listening did.

“That’s Hercules, just- there,” Blaine held the eyepiece so Kurt could focus on the constellation, tucking his hands behind his back to prevent himself from unconsciously moving the telescope, as he had now done twice, resulting in stifled groans and endless laughter. Blaine had adjusted the stand so that it was closer to the ground, allowing him to angle it perfectly through the breaks in the canopy above them whilst they sat on adjoining cushions, closer than they ever would've been outside of the spinney. The telescope was a brilliant excuse for their proximity. 

“Oh wow,” Kurt gasped, then smiled slyly. “Interesting bone structure.” Blaine rolled his eyes as Kurt looked up from the scope with mischief written on his face.

“Yeah, you can really see the muscle definition, huh?” An elbow in his side - he was closer now. Blaine leant back down to the eyepiece to search for something to distract him from the strange warmth in his chest. “And there’s Aquarius.” 

“I’m an Aquarius,” Kurt said, nonchalant. Blaine watched a strand of his hair fall down his forehead when he bent down to look, and his fingers twitched with the automatic reflex to sweep it behind his ear. 

“Really? When were you born?” He easily forgot people’s birthdays, but something told him he’d remember Kurt’s. 

“January 29th. What about you?” Oh. He gulped - he hadn’t really thought he would ask him back, and for some reason, it felt like telling Kurt would make the limit on their time more painful, more obvious. If he told him, then he might ask what he was going to do come September, now he was almost 18, and now Kurt was leaning back on his propped up arms looking at him expectantly with that crystalline face and Blaine’s thoughts were swimming in a way they only really did when he felt like it was getting harder to breathe. He compromised.

“I'm a Virgo,” For a moment, Kurt looked confused, but he let it slide. He knew that Blaine took some time to warm up to sharing information on certain things, and he wasn’t sure why his birthday mattered that much, but he wasn’t gonna spook him because of something so trivial. Virgo season was a small enough time frame for him to keep a gift for him. 

“Yeah, you seem like a Virgo.” A small silence expanded between them, strangely awkward for the first time since it had been that day at the supermarket. Blaine was quick to fill it, anxious at the prospect of questions that hadn’t even been proposed yet. 

“Hey, come with me,” He began to stand, holding out a hand for Kurt who gladly took it, letting himself be pulled up with him, gently touching his shoulder with his when at eye level again. 

“Come where?” Kurt asked, squinting. “This isn’t the part where you reveal you’ve just been buttering me up for murder, is it?”

Blaine just sighed, amused. “Do you ever stop with the wit?” He began to lead Kurt away from the tree and towards the edge of the woodland, out towards the field facing away from Kurt’s house. 

“Hm, no.” Kurt was glad to let Blaine guide him, cherishing the pull his surprisingly strong hands had on his, but he was unnerved at Blaine’s silence and sudden change in disposition. “Seriously, Blaine, where are we going?” 

“Here.” He didn’t elaborate until they were just outside of the spinney, facing out into miles of rolling fields, safely hidden from the main track by the trees behind them. Blaine, much to Kurt’s surprise, got down onto the floor and lay on his back, looking up, dizzyingly, at Kurt who was still standing above him. “Come, lie with me.” There was shock on Kurt’s face, sure, but for some reason, he was also anxious.

“In the… in the grass?” It might’ve seemed ridiculous, or like he was just worried about his clothes (which, to be fair, he sort of was, but that wasn’t part of it), but Blaine knew by now that Kurt had an abnormal relationship with dirt for someone who spent so much time outside. It occurred to him that whenever he was outside, though, there was a blanket between Kurt and the ground, and he wasn’t about to judge Kurt for something he clearly had trouble controlling. He wanted to help him, though, show him that, at least for now, he had someone who would protect him from whatever he was so scared of. He wasn’t expecting it to work, but he wanted to try. He sat up on his elbows to look at Kurt more directly, taking a steadying breath, as if to subconsciously remind Kurt to breathe.

“Yes, in the grass.” Kurt still looked apprehensive. “I promise you’re perfectly safe down here with me. If anything gets on you, I promise I’ll take it off, or I can go get you a blanket now if you want?” He smiled with as much understanding as he could muster up at the beautiful boy who looked down at him with a more nervous smile. Kurt considered.

“Even if it’s a field mouse?” Blaine knocked his knee and Kurt couldn’t help but giggle.

“Yes, even if it’s a field mouse. I'll sacrifice myself for you.” The anxiety fell from Kurt’s face, softening, and he slowly lowered himself to the ground next to Blaine, stretching his legs out in front of him, one crossed over the other, and his arms wrapped around his stomach. But when Blaine lay back down beside him, Kurt’s hand was waiting to grasp his. He almost choked at how tightly he did so. “Well done.” His voice was warm, and that was enough to relax Kurt’s grip a little. 

“Thank you. Uh, what do you want to show me?” His voice was tighter than usual, and so Blaine moved his thumb over the back of his hand, once, in an attempt to remind him he was here.

“Nothing special, really.” Luckily Blaine couldn’t see the momentary disbelief in Kurt’s face from this angle, because for a second Kurt thought he would be the one murdering Blaine tonight if he had made him come down here for nothing. “I just wanted you to see how beautiful they were all together like this. We never really saw them properly back in Maine, but it’s all farms around here - less pollution. It kind of reminds me of your poems, if that makes sense.” _Oh._ He had to say the flattery was comforting enough.

“Yeah, I can sorta see that. They… flow.” Blaine hummed in approval. He took a deep breath, trying to absorb as much of this moment, this starry moment holding Kurt’s hand in the dry green grass under the June sky, as he possibly could before it slipped away under him and into the end of summer. “Hey, Kurt, you see that one, kind of pulsing, twinkling a little? Just above Hercules’ head?”

“Uh,” Kurt titled his head, feeling his hair brush against Blaine’s and realising just how close they were. He didn’t move. “Oh, yeah.”

“I know it probably already has a name, but I… I think I’m going to name it after you, Kurt. I already associate the stars with you from, you know, meeting here, but I think you should, I don't know, have your own, to look at and remember this stuff. With, uh, us.” Kurt couldn’t believe how impossibly cheesy Blaine was, and yet all he wanted to do was turn his head and kiss him for as long as he was allowed. Unfortunately, the fear of rejection and the more irrational fear of an insect crawling into his ear was stopping him, so he squeezed his hand, and decided to tell a story instead.

“Do you know about Patroclus and Achilles?” Kurt’s voice was thick with what Blaine guessed was anxiety, prompting him to sit up in an attempt to make sure he was alright, but Kurt simply tugged him back down beside him. 

“Um, Achilles, yeah, but not Patroclus. Why?”

“Well, in The Iliad they were really close friends. Like, _really_ close friends. And Patroclus was Achilles right-hand-man, I guess, and when Achilles got really stubborn about fighting the Trojans, Patroclus went and fought for him. He died in the battle, and Achilles was heart-broken, so he went to avenge him even though there was a prophecy it would kill him, which it did. And even though Homer didn’t actually say it, everyone thought they must have been in love with each other. Really in love, I mean, not just, um, sex.” Neither of them said anything, didn’t acknowledge the importance of what either had said, but Blaine turned his hand and laced his fingers between Kurt’s for a moment before sitting up. _You are not going to cry, and you are not going to kiss him, Blaine._

“Come on, I can tell you’re worried about your hair getting wet,” Kurt immediately began to stand, ever using comedy to cover up whatever emotions he was feeling, and prioritised cleaning himself off over helping Blaine off. The shorter boy didn’t mind, though, just smiled for the longest period of time he could remember having smiled since he was a child.

“Oh, thank god, is there grass on my back?”

After brushing Kurt’s back off with gentle, fleeting hands, and reassuring him that there was nothing hiding in his hair (Kurt was sure that the frequency of his worries was annoying Blaine, but if it was, he wasn’t showing it - he just continued to check when the other boy asked, and reassured him that there really was nothing there) they made their way back over to the clearing to settle on the platform, lying next to each other once again with their heads resting on quilted pillows. They were surrounded by the glowing light of twinkling string lights and the steadfast lantern, shining out of the darkness of twilight, and the soft, slow radio poured a level of reassurance over them both that they really weren’t alone.

“Do you ever feel like you’re falling? When you’re trying to sleep, I mean, and you suddenly jump when you hit the ground and wake up.” Kurt sounded half-asleep himself as he said it, and Blaine could only imagine those eyes of his laden with fatigue, limbs heavy, lips parted. He tried to convince himself that it wasn’t creepy that he was thinking about how beautiful Kurt would look when asleep, devoid of anxiety and stress for once in his life.

“I feel like that all the time, I think.” They both sighed, soft enough to remain part of a subtext, but loud enough for them both to hear each other and long to reach out. It was funny, really, the way that non-existent thing called fate seemed to work - Your Song began to play over the crackling of the interference on the radio. Blaine swallowed his pride. He was doing a lot of that recently. “Kurt?”

“Yeah?” His breath hitched. He had desperately wanted him to ask.

“Do you want to dance?” Kurt tried not to grin as much as he wanted to.

“Yes, please.” They stood with haste, not wanting to waste the opportunity they had missed last time. They stood opposite each other, glancing around the other’s face for some hint of what to do - it was awkward at first, really. Neither had really slow-danced before (unless you counted the time Blaine had danced with his cousin at his aunt’s wedding last summer, or when Kurt had stood on his mom’s feet as a child and danced around the living room to swing music), and the protocol for boys dancing together was non-existent in their minds. Somehow, Kurt ended up with his hands around Blaine’s neck, Blaine’s arms settled around his waist, drawing Kurt as close to him as he possibly could without making him uncomfortable. Kurt was _very_ comfortable, but he wasn’t going to let that show. 

“I see why you declined at first now.” He was once again ruining a tender moment with humous, finding it impossible to take anything remotely romantic seriously for fear of screwing it up, but Blaine, some kind of love in his eyes, just raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Clearly you didn't want to embarrass yourself with your left feet.”

Blaine laughed and took a chance in resting his chin on Kurt’s shoulder. “Quiet, you.” Kurt was shocked at the impossible softness of his voice but was glad nothing he was doing was pushing him away. He was shocked but glad all the same.

Soon, as the song conveniently finished, it was nearing ten, and by now they had learnt this was the best time to distance themselves from each other so that Blaine could return home before raising his father’s suspicions. Wheeling his bike next to him, on the side opposite Kurt so he could minimise the space between their shoulders, Blaine walked Kurt back to the end of the path outside of the Hummel home. He never wanted to leave. He wanted to know what it felt like to shake his father’s hand, how it felt to bring Kurt his coffee in the mornings (cream, no sugar), how it felt to help his mother prepare dinner, how it felt to wake up with Kurt’s cat resting on his feet at the bottom of the bed. He wanted to feel something other than the fear he felt in his own home. He wanted Kurt.

“Goodnight, Blaine.” It took every part of Kurt not to invite him inside for sleepytime tea. He knew Blaine would say yes, would earn himself a black eye, and that wasn’t something he was willing to sacrifice for five minutes more.

“Goodnight, Kurt.” As always, he watched the red bike disappear over the horizon and wondered when, if ever, he would remain on this side of the sunset. 

“What’s up with you, kid? Seem chipper.” Kurt was grinning when he entered the house moments later, removing his shoes in the hallway and entering the kitchen to find his father sitting with his own cup of tea reading over what was clearly some work paperwork. Kurt sighed in content, leaning his back against the door frame. 

“I think I’m just happy, dad.” Burt was happy to see his son looking so happy for a reason other than his mom getting a new issue of Vogue. 

“No complications?” He asked.

“No complications.” They shared a smile. Maybe things wouldn’t be as crappy now as they had been for the past 17 years - they certainly seemed to be getting better.

“I’m glad, kiddo.” Kurt sighed happily and turned on his heel, back out into the hallway.

“Night, dad,” He called from the bottom of the staircase.

“Love you, Kurt. Sleep well.” 

“Love you too.” 

For once, Kurt didn’t feel anxious. He didn’t feel the compulsive need to go and shower, now he was inside again. He didn’t think about the future, for a moment. He didn’t worry about when he would next see Blaine, because he knew he was only a day away. He flopped down onto his bed, ever the dramatic, and let his hand find his cat, scratching behind her ears as she purred softly. The blankets beneath him were warm from where she had been lying, and he nearly tearing up at the idea that things, for once, felt perfect.

“Oh, Nettie, if only you knew how beautiful he was.” He whispered to the ceiling above him more than the cat next to him, because it was true, and somehow he didn’t know how to tell him.

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

Their first kiss was under less than romantic circumstances. 

It was only the day after their excursion with the telescope. Blaine had managed to get an early shift by bribing Lindsey with a Baby Ruth to swap with him - at six in the evening, he came round the side of the grocery store wheeling his bike next to him, apron stuffed in his backpack, green fleece crumpled over a plain blue polo. In an ideal world, he imagined going home and changing clothes for Kurt, but he knew the boy would value seeing him early over whatever he was wearing (because Kurt always seemed to have fashion tips regardless of how hard he worked on his outfit, which was strangely endearing - he knew he didn’t mean it in a bad way, just in a _you look cute, but imagine how much cuter you’d look if you matched your primary and complementary colours_ way.)

When he pulled out into the street, though, Blaine dropped his bike to the ground with no concern for scratching the paint his father had spent so much time grilling him about how much money he had spent on it. The moment he saw what was happening, all he could care about was Kurt.

“Please, please just leave me alone,” Across the street, where Blaine approaching with a short jog, Kurt lay prone on the sidewalk, hands up in front of a bleeding face. His voice was strained and yet he still managed to keep it strong as steel. “It’s getting boring now.” _That wit is gonna get you killed one day,_ is what Blaine wanted to say to him. Instead, he just quickened his pace. 

“And why would we do that?” A boy, taller than both of them (Blaine didn’t have time to remember how short he was) stood over him, fists still ready, his left stained with something red. On Kurt’s right, another kid with what looked like a rat taped to his head stood smiling evilly down at him, clearly endorsing his friend and readying his own attack. _Because I’m gonna fucking kill you, that’s why. “_ Prissy little faggot like you must be used to it by now,” Blaine’s blood was searing. He couldn’t get there fast enough to stop the asshole with a mohawk from kicking Kurt in the side. Both Blaine and Kurt winced. 

“I know for a fact he’s used to it,” The kicker spat, almost literally, down at Kurt. When Blaine was finally there, he ignored the burning in his chest and put himself between Kurt and the guy who had punched him, puffing out his chest in a way Kurt had never seen him do before. He kind of looked ridiculous, but he wanted to hug him despite what he knew from experience were broken ribs in his chest.

“Hey, what the fuck are you doing?” Kurt watched with blood-blurred vision as Blaine pushed Karofsky back, his voice possessed by anger he’d only heard when he spoke about his dad. He tried to heave himself up onto his hands, but Puckerman forced a foot onto his chest and kept him pinned on the ground. He heard Karofsky’s sickening scoff, a sound he had felt the sting of humiliation from a few too many times. 

“Oh, does Burt Reynolds have something to say for little old Lady Hummel here?” Without looking he could tell that Blaine was swallowing, _hard_ , and for a moment he thought he’d step away. What reason did he have to stay here and defend Kurt anyway? He had a father who’d kill him for coming home a minute after curfew, or would double any bruises he sustained. It was nice to imagine a knight in shining armour sometimes, but Kurt knew by now he was no one’s princess.

“Yeah, actually, he does,” Despite the happy surprise at Blaine’s willingness to stick up for him, Kurt groaned at Blaine’s response. He wanted to escape, just for a moment, into the endless sky that was spotted with the stars in his vision from what was probably a concussion from that lay before him, where he lay on the cracked concrete. Kurt knew he was an idiot, but he didn’t expect Blaine to be one as well. 

He struggled to take a breath, tasting the blood at the back of his throat but managed to croak out a feeble warning. “Blaine, leave it-”

“Shut up, Kurt.” _Well, at least I can tell his parents I tried at his funeral._ “Leave him alone. I don’t know who you are, but don’t you have anything better to do on a Saturday night?” Kurt rolled his eyes, but a small smile appeared on his face. Someone was defending him. Unfortunately, that apparently warranted Puck leaning more of his weight on his chest, causing him a spluttered cough that thankfully didn’t seem to be bloody this time. _Fewer bloodstains to deal with - how considerate of them not to puncture a lung._

“Not sure that’s any of your business, _Blaine._ ” Kurt had been stupid enough to mention Blaine’s name, but he hoped that it wouldn’t come back to bite him if Blaine was skipping town at the end of the summer. Blaine, on the other hand, felt the hair on his arms rise at the realisation his father would probably, supernaturally, find out about this. He could imagine his interrogation now - _why’re you fraternizing with the faggy kid, huh? Do you not remember our agreement?_

“Where’d you come from anyway, kid? Thought I’d recognise a fruit like yourself by now.” Before he could think about the repercussions, Blaine’s fist was meeting the side of Karofsky’s cheek with a dull thud. It was enough to wind him for a second and prompt Puck to remove himself from Kurt’s chest to come over and help his fuckwitted friend up. 

“It’s one of your god damn business where I came from, now piss off,” Kurt scrambled back the moment Puck let him up, struggling to balance himself on his knees and wiping the blood from his forehead before realising that doing that stung like a bitch. Blaine began backing towards him, glancing back and looking pointedly at the bike that lay on the other side of the road. There was a pannier rack for deliveries on the back wheel that Kurt had ridden on before when he asked Blaine _nicely_ if he could, and, by some miracle, he understood what Blaine was saying with that one look. 

“What are you gonna do if we don’t, faggot?” Puck was upright and wild with anger again, Karofsky still doubled over behind him and nursing his face. Blaine hoped to god it left a mark because his hand was already starting to ache.

“God, is your vocabulary really that small?”

“Blaine…” Kurt warned him with his tone, now on his feet and clutching at his side. He knew Blaine was starting to push it farther than he knew, but Blaine was on a mean streak.

“Kurt, just, wait, will you?” Blaine retorted, shooting him his own angry glare, and as much as Kurt was thankful he was here, he wanted to shove him for a moment. 

“Seriously, faggot, you’re testing our patience.” Blaine raised an eyebrow at the angrily mumbling boy behind whoever this thug speaking to him was. He was surprisingly cocky when defending Kurt. “I’d go now before it’s too late for your little friend there.” Kurt saw Puckerman’s nod towards him, never failing to hit him with nausea.

“You may have escaped without a scar last time, Hummel, but I doubt you’d get that lucky again.” Kurt had finally reached Blaine and placed a shaking hand on his shoulder. He just wanted to stop him from getting himself hurt, but suddenly Karofsky was upright again and pushing past Puckerman to get at Blaine who by now was standing a few feet away. 

“You’re gonna regret that, pretty boy,” Blaine’s eyes widened when he realised what the meathead coming towards him was aiming for with an upright fist again. He turned and grabbed Kurt’s arm, and began to pull him as fast as his legs would take him across the street to his bike.

“Kurt, come on,” Before Karofsky could lay a retributive finger on Blaine’s pretty face, he was saddled on his bike with Kurt’s arms wrapped around his waist and cycling anywhere that wasn’t here. He tried to imagine Kurt was hugging him with such ferocity without quietly crying into his shoulder, but he couldn’t deny the reality of what had happened. He also couldn’t help but linger on what that asshole had said - ‘ _this time._ ’ How many times had Kurt been literally trodden on by these people? _Was_ he used to it by now? The thought brought tears to his eyes, and he cycled faster, trying to avoid the bumps in the dirt track he had found himself on to minimise Kurt’s pain. Every disruption on the road made him whimper and Blaine just wanted to be able to protect him from that and every other obtrusion in his life that could hurt him. Instead, he cycled.

It was only minutes before Blaine began to slow down, sidling up beside the creek that ran through the woods south of town, away from the eyes of the main path where their speech would be covered by the sound of running water. As soon as he stopped, Kurt jumped off of the bike and distanced himself by a good few metres from where Blaine propped it up on its stand and dismounted himself, careful not to suddenly approach the now-pacing Kurt.

There was dried blood running down his face from a cut just above his perfect eyebrow, and the corner of his mouth was bruised where his lip was split. It was clear his chest was in pain from the way his shoulders caved in on himself, but he still found the energy to breathe heavily through his nose and run his hands through his hair over and over again - a nervous tick that Blaine had noticed during their time together - as he muttered expletives to himself. The moment Blaine stepped towards him, mouth poised to say something, his face snapped towards him with widened eyes and anger set in his jaw. 

“Are you god damn stupid, Blaine Anderson?” Blaine shut his mouth. Kurt was right in front of him now, chest rising and falling rapidly. He could smell him, could see the exposed flesh beneath the dried blood, the red rims around his bloodshot eyes. “Do you have any idea what they could’ve done to you?” _Ouch._

“Kurt, relax, they’re just dumb bullies. They wouldn’t have-” He tried to reach out with an open hand to stroke his upper arm, but before he had the chance Kurt had groaned loudly and stepped out of bounds again, resuming his pacing as before. 

“Yes, they would have! You have no idea what it’s like around here for me!” _But I just wanted to help, wanted to understand._ “I know you came from some big progressive city in _Maine-_ ” Okay, Lewiston was _not_ that progressive.

“Kurt, please, I was just-”

“But, funnily enough, it’s not like that everywhere!” Kurt was crying now. When Blaine saw his face broken by tears, ploughing through the tracks of reddish-brown on his face, his own waterworks started. He just wanted Kurt to be safe, or even just to feel safe before he had to leave.

“I’ve been dealing with that shit for twelve fucking years so, please, please do not tell me I don’t know what they would’ve done to you.” Blaine tilted his head. “Or me.” Kurt stopped to bite his fingernails, and Blaine finally put his hands on his arms and held him still in front of him, forcing the taller boy to look at him instead of letting his rambling thoughts carry on. 

“Hey, Kurt, honey, calm down,” Kurt sighed and looked Blaine dead in the eyes. He was frustrated, but he wasn’t angry, and he certainly didn’t need to calm down. 

“Do not tell me to calm down, Blaine, I swear to god.” It took everything in Kurt not to break away from him, but he trusted that Blaine needed to feel him beneath his hands just as much as he needed to feel those hands through the fabric of his shirt. “Just- shit, ow,” Kurt exclaimed, raising a hand to his face to feel the stinging cut on his face. It was deep, but not deep enough for the hospital. Defeated, he sat on the ground, for once not caring about the fact he had no protection from whatever was beneath him, the adrenaline from his rant still coursing through him. He didn’t expect Blaine to sit opposite him.

“Please, let me have a look?” Blaine asked. Kurt didn’t flinch when he put his hand on his forehead, smoothing the hair that had come loose from his hairspray back against his head and picking some of the blood clinging to his skin in painful clumps from his skin. It was soothing in some ways, but, in others, it felt like being punched again. 

“No, it’s fine.” Blaine shuffled further forwards, placing another hand on Kurt’s chin and tilting his head up so he could properly see his lip.

The bruising spread from the epicentre at the right corner of his mouth to the bottom of his nose, nearly reaching down to his chin. It was still light, but Blaine knew from his own experiences that soon it would be a deep purple. From the way Kurt was talking he obviously hadn’t broken a tooth or bitten his lip, which was, at least, one less thing to deal with. It felt eerily similar, sitting here, to how it had on that first day they had met outside the store. He almost smiled at the memory. Blaine really hoped the chewing out he had gotten from his manager about the spiky milk would be worth it in the end. “It’s fine, Blaine.” Kurt’s voice had softened now, as had his eyes. He sounded tired and sad more than anything.

“It’s obviously not fine,” He brushed his thumb over his untouched cheek before reaching over to the rushing water beside him to wet his hand and began slowly working the blood off of the skin surrounding his wounds. For a moment, Kurt leant into the touch, glad to feel a little cleaner, before withdrawing once again. He didn’t _want_ Blaine taking care of him. Well, he did, but not now. He had done this on his own for however long - he didn’t need someone else to do it for him. He didn’t fight all those years to be coddled by some handsome boy who would probably leave in September and never speak to him again anyway.

“Please don’t do that. Please,” He put his hands on Blaine’s arm, pulling his hand away from his face and looking at him sincerely - Blaine nodded, drying his hand on his pants. Then, he took Kurt’s hands in his. Kurt let him but didn’t do more than look down at where Blaine’s hands rested over his, marvelling at the warmth they seemed to exude even after being submerged in the icy water.

“What did he mean, last time?” Blaine peered into his eyes, but Kurt didn’t meet them this time.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kurt said, looking away.

“That’s okay.” The squeeze Blaine gave him reminded Kurt that he was sincere; that he was here for no reason other than him. They sat like that for a few minutes, Blaine rubbing circles into Kurt’s cold hands and looking at him with worry, and Kurt staring at a bird building a nest on the other side of the stream. He wondered sometimes what it would be like to just go live in the woods. He’d have no way to survive in terms of food, but maybe Blaine would come with him and miraculously know how to hunt or fish. Burt had taken him fishing once on an unwilling camping trip when he was 14, and whilst Kurt had tried to seem interested, he’d struggled in actually mustering the strength to reel anything in.

He had the strength - he loved those home workout videos his mom ordered from telemarketers - but part of him couldn’t come to terms with the idea of actually killing something. It wasn’t really that he didn’t want to tell Blaine, because he did. It was more the fear of appearing weak because Kurt _wasn’t_ weak, it’s just that when everyone assumes you are and treats you as such you learn to take what you think is coming. Years of bullying and beatings had taught him that no matter how hard he could hit back if he wanted to, there was no point. There were always more of them, always more hatred, and some point along the way he learned to take it instead of fight it. In the end, it was one less injury - he didn’t have to worry about his hands.

“When I was, like, 15,” Blaine looked up at Kurt abruptly, surprised at the deepness of his voice, clearly thickened by melancholy or, worse, blood. “Some of them… Karofsky, Puckerman, a few others, uh… they pinned me down in the field behind the theatre and used a stupid penknife to…” Blaine choked on air at the words he knew were about to come. “To write that word on my shoulder.” Kurt wasn’t crying this time, but Blaine was. It was silent, but visceral cries ran through his body as he thought of the pain this sweet, sweet man must have gone through. He cried for his naivety. 

“Kurt…” He heard the pain in his voice and looked up to meet Blaine’s eyes with unfiltered worry - Blaine felt bad for it, for making him feel anything but his kindness right now, but he needed him to know he would do anything to stop something like that from happening again. 

“Please, Blaine. I just…” Kurt held his hands, finally, and he felt the warmth spreading into his fingers. “I just don’t want you getting involved in that. I know what your dad would be like.”

“Kurt…” He almost laughed, but it came out stale in the space between them that seemed smaller than ever, emotionally _and_ physically... “That doesn’t matter nearly as much as you do. I’m sorry I underplayed it all, I should’ve listened.” He raised a hand, almost going for Blaine’s cheek, but instead landing on his shoulder, fingers brushing the base of his neck. The fleece was soft and purled, and Kurt imagined what it would feel like to wear it.

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. Thank you for being there, at least.” 

Without hesitation, Blaine replied. “I will always be there.” _Or ill try to be._ Kurt let out a strangled sob, and Blaine moved his hands to his face again to stop any tears from falling into his wounds. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m just fucking sick of it. Of this.” He sniffed heavily and rubbed his face in his sleeve, brushing over his lip without care. Kurt stood, letting Blaine’s hands fall back into his lap and started skimming the edge of the creek with the tip of his shoes. He wanted to move. He wanted to breathe. He wanted to get as far away from Lima as he could. Everything was falling in around him and he couldn’t deal with it anymore - the anxiety was rising without reason through his legs and into his stomach and building pressure in his head and he could not stop thinking about how nice it would be to be anywhere but here. 

“Be careful, you’re still bleed-” Blaine started, not having moved from his place on the ground where he watched Kurt from with a furrowed, nervous brow.

“I’m just so sick of it, Blaine.” It was more of an explosion than a sentence, which Blaine hadn’t really expected. He waited for him to speak - he needed it more than Blaine needed validation right now. “When is it gonna stop? Is it ever gonna stop? Will I ever be allowed to just exist? I wasn't even _doing_ anything!” Again, Kurt kicked the water, sending a spray flying on the wind downstream. He grunted in frustration, unsure of what to do with his hands except for pull on his sleeves. All of a sudden, Blaine was next to him, gently trying to guide him back to where they had been sitting. 

“Kurt, Kurt, sit down, you look pale.” When they made it back to the spot they had sat in, Kurt just stood. He stared at the ground, not meeting Blaine’s eyes. He could hear him speaking, but the fury building inside of him was blurring the words. Something about sitting down or taking him home, but Kurt just wanted to move.

“I was just walking down the fucking street!” Blaine was surprised by his sudden outburst, taking an apprehensive step forward to put his hands on Kurt’s shoulders again. Kurt met his eyes, trying to suppress whatever was stopping him from being honest with the boy in front of him. “What’s wrong with that, Blaine? Why did I need some straight-looking guy to come and save me? When will it just fucking end? I just want it to end, Blaine,” He let himself collapse into Blaine’s arms tears falling down his face with stinging ferocity, and Blaine just held him, resting a hand on the back of his head.

“Kurt, no,” Blaine whispered near his ear. It was only then Kurt realised the double meaning to his words.

“Not like that. I just mean,” He held Blaine at arm’s length. “I just mean when will people learn to grow up already? I _just_ want to exist. I just want to wear what I want and-and I want to hold your hand when I walk down the street,” Kurt didn’t even realise what he had said, but Blaine all but gasped. “And take whatever books I want to out of the library and just _be,_ Blaine, and-” And then Blaine’s lips, uncoordinated and salty with tears, were on Kurt’s. Blaine was restrained at first, but Kurt kissed back almost instantly despite the stinging the pressure brought to the wound on his bottom lip. _It’s not like fireworks,_ Kurt considered. _It’s like breathing._ It hurt a little when Blaine finally realised what he was doing, although in reality the kiss had only lasted a few seconds, and pulled back, blushing furiously. Kurt was smiling at him for the first time today. “Oh.” 

“Crap,” Blaine stated. His eyes widened, and he nearly tried to step out of Kurt’s arms, but the other boy just held him tighter. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that, then. It was inappropriate. You’re not-”

“I’m fine, now, Blaine.” There was a lilt in Kurt’s voice again, like some hidden melody had been restored. It worried Blaine how quickly it had returned, but the fact he had done that turned a switch inside of him. _I kissed him_. 

“No, you’re not,” Blaine said plainly.

Kurt sighed. “I’m not, but I’m better. Please don’t be sorry.” He placed a hand on the side of Blaine’s neck, drawing him closer again. He could feel Blaine’s shuddering breaths against his face and let his hand brush the place where his curls met his skin as a comfort.

The kiss hadn’t fixed anything, they both knew that, but that didn’t make it less enjoyable. “Do it again.” And so he did. It was still surface level, naturally. They were in a forest, and one of them was bleeding, and the one who was bleeding also had a busted lip. But it was tender all the same, sweet, despite the metallic taste of blood that passed between them. As much as both had pictured this moment, this wasn’t what they had envisioned. “Promise you’ll never stop,” Kurt gasped out when he finally pulled away, resting his forehead against Blaine’s. This was everything he had hoped for from his first corny teenage kiss: a dramatic moment, a tragic subplot, an awesome setting, the only boy. It really felt like he was reading something gorgeous.

“I promise not to stop. But, Kurt…” The uncertainty in Blaine’s voice worried him, and he could feel the crease in his forehead from the pain it sent across his face.

“Blaine?” He kissed him again, short and chaste and sweet, and sighed against his lips.

“Please don’t tell anyone.” Kurt couldn’t stop his face from falling a little. What about his mom? “Please. I- one day we’ll be able to, but we… not right now.” He knew where Blaine was coming from - even telling his parents could be some sort of risk to him. It was mainly about his safety, and Kurt’s, in this weird, small town. Kurt worried, though, that there never would be a one day, a day where he got to do all those things he wanted to with Blaine. Why did holding someone’s hand have to be so dangerous?

“I mean, who exactly would I tell anyway,” _There you go with_ that _coping mechanism again, Kurt._

“ _Kurt,_ ” It almost sounded like Blaine was pleading, and although he kicked the dirt on the ground with a certain air of frustration, he conceded.

“Yeah, Blaine, I won’t.” After a silent moment, he untangled himself from his arms, already missing the strength and warmth they had imbued him with. He never wanted to leave them, he decided then. Never. 

It took Kurt a moment to gather himself. For a second there he thought someone had turned out the light - but the water still ran, the birds still flew in the growing darkness above, the clouds still shifted over them, and Blaine still waited there for him. He wondered how long Blaine would wait for him. He wondered how long he would wait for Blaine. Kurt wondered what forever really meant; the blue-green currents running over cracked rocks didn’t tell him, no novel had ever told him what it meant for a couple like them, and Kurt wasn’t even really sure if they were or would ever be a couple. Kurt wanted nothing but to be alone at that moment, in another, more accepting time. 

“I should cycle you home.” His voice was like a siren, guiding him out of the fog he had led himself into. He had no idea how Blaine had come to be here at the exact time he needed him - not only today but on that first day, too. Why did Kurt feel the urge to push him away, now of all times?

“Oh, you don’t have to. It’s not far from here,” He tried to sound like he wasn’t crying, but he knew the veins of his voice shone through any shield he could put up now. Blaine touched him, innocently - Kurt wasn’t sure where, his body felt numb and miles away now, but he knew Blaine was standing behind him. He could smell the raspberries.

“But I really want to,” Blaine said it like a question, and with a heel turn, Kurt was smiling at him faintly. He imagined the mess he looked whilst Blaine seemed endlessly prettier with a tear-stained face. The slight reddening across his the tip of his nose, ending by curling around his ears, brought out the mahogany in his eyes. In reality, Blaine couldn’t tell the difference between Kurt’s eyes and the creek behind him. 

“Oh… okay then. Okay. um, I’ll get on the back again?” He strode past Blaine towards where he had left the bike and waited for him to jog over. He didn’t feel bad. He felt sore.

“Yeah, you can… you can hold onto me if you need to. Ready?” _No,_ he thought, but wrapped his arms around Blaine’s waist again, letting his hands find their way beneath his fleece to grasp at the sides of his polo, and Blaine kicked off from the ground. 

In the five minutes it took to ride to the Hummel household, Kurt almost fell asleep twice. Blaine worried it was some side-affect of blood loss, but Kurt sleepily reminded him that he hadn’t actually lost _that_ much blood. Kurt decided that, yes, it sucked that Blaine couldn’t or wouldn’t say anything about them to anyone, but when he reminded himself where and when they were it made sense again. Kurt wasn’t angry at Blaine; he was angry at their circumstances. Plus, the way Blaine asked if he was alright every thirty seconds softened him up a little. As long as there were other kisses, he didn’t really mind what they had to do to make sure they happened. 

“Are your parents home?” Blaine asked from the seat of his bike once Kurt had swung himself off of the back and stood, hands clasped in front of him in the most adorable way, at the end of the path towards his front door.

“No. My dad’s at work and I think mom’s at a bible study.” Blaine made a face, and Kurt rolled his eyes with a smile. “Relax, she’s not, you know, like _that_.” 

“Can I come in?” Blaine cleared his throat when Kurt just looked at him blankly.

“Oh, yes, please. Only if you want to, of course!” said Kurt, flustered.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to.” 

For the first time ever, instead of cycling away, Blaine got to walk down the path to Kurt’s front door for a reason other than leaving a newspaper. His heart quickened a little when Kurt unlocked his front door and left it open behind him for Blaine.

He was in a home for what felt like the first time ever. He loved it - the walls were moulded, white and green, and the decor and plants even in the foyer were so much more vibrant and alive than anything he had seen in the Anderson house. After prompting him to take off his shoes, which he left neatly next to the welcome mat by the door, Kurt led him into the kitchen as if it were the most natural thing in the world, inviting him to sit at the kitchen table where a salt and pepper ragdoll cat lay in a small pile in the last patch of light coming in through the windows.

“This is Nettie,” Kurt explained, stopping momentarily to scratch behind the cat’s ears affectionately. 

“Hi, Nettie. You’re cute as hell.” Blaine sat opposite her, gently holding out a hand for her to inspect before he stroked her gently, careful to brush his hand with her hair. He blinked slowly, remembering reading somewhere that cats showed trust that way, and smiled when Kurt giggled at Nettie’s loud purring. This had to be a good sign. He had been approved of by the cat. 

“Do you want some tea?” Kurt was taking down two cups from a cupboard, one of them a garish hot pink and the other branded with the M*A*S*H* logo. 

“Do you have any coffee?” Blaine felt guilty asking for anything that might put Kurt out of his way, but the cycling with an extra passenger had tired him out considerably, and he really didn’t want to fall asleep on the Hummel’s kitchen table.

“Oh, sure! Black, two sugars, right?” Luckily, Kurt quickly produced a tin of instant coffee.

“Right.” _How did he remember that? I don’t even remember telling him that._ Another wave of affection for Kurt washed over him, reminding him that he was still sort of bleeding and Blaine had done nothing to try and stop it. “Where’s your first aid kid?” 

“Oh, really, Blaine, I’m fine,” Kurt said over the sound of the tap filling up the kettle.

“Oh, really, Kurt, you’re not. I don’t want to alarm you, but your face is, uh…” Blaine didn’t want to point out just how much dried blood had accumulated but, well, there was quite a bit.

“Pretty screwed up?” Once he had placed the kettle on the stove he turned back to Blaine, hoisting himself up on the counter to stare him down. 

“Only a little screwed up. In a cute way.” Kurt raised an eyebrow. “Don’t, I’m new at this.” Once tea had been brewed and coffee stirred, Kurt begrudgingly brought out the first aid kit for the second time this summer and let Blaine begin to clean his face.

“Crap, Blaine, that hurts,” Kurt stifled a whine with a sip of his tea, Blaine looking back at him sympathetically with that stupidly cute little smile.

“I know just… just hold still. It’ll be over soon. At least you’re not covered in blood anymore, hey?” He gently swiped a cotton pad over the cut above his forehead, trying his best to prevent any kind of infection. Its depth was pretty alarming - had Karofsky been wearing rings or something? Seemed pretty hypocritical if you asked Blaine.

“What's on that, absinthe?” Kurt looked like he needed a stiff drink.

“Hm, pretty much.” Through the pain, Kurt managed a smile. He was lucky, really. He had finally found a friend, and that friend was _Blaine_. Blaine who was _gay_ and had _kissed_ him and _punched_ someone for him and was now cleaning his face with the softest hands for him. Careful not to spill either of their drinks or the open bottle of iodine on the table, he leant across the space between their adjacent chairs to kiss him quickly on the lips, avoiding any contact with the scabbed part of his lip. 

“What was that for?” Blaine asked, a dazed smile appearing in his eyes.

“I dunno, just being in my kitchen, I guess,” Kurt took another sip of tea, avoiding Blaine’s eyes as they returned to disinfecting. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? What if you need stitches? It’s pretty deep.”

“Blaine,” Kurt placed a hand on Blaine’s knee. “I promise I’ve been beaten up enough times to know when I do and don’t need stitches. It’ll be fine, just put some strips over it.” The idea of Kurt going through any pain like this more than once broke Blaine a little, but he just nodded timidly, beginning to place steri-strips on his forehead. “Do you want me to get you a shirt?” 

“What?” Looking down, Blaine finally noticed the blood that had somehow gotten onto his polo, staining large splotches of brown into the material. “Oh, oh, damn, uh… is that okay?” 

“Of course. Come with me.” Kurt said as he stood, nodding his head towards the staircase outside the kitchen.

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve not got a chainsaw in my room, Blaine.” He called from the stairs he was already climbing. Ignoring any apprehension, Blaine followed him down the short corridor at the top of the house towards Kurt’s bedroom, something that felt so sacred having never been inside it before. It wasn’t exactly what he expected - none of the Western posters or comic book memorabilia he had in his room deigned to enter Kurt’s room, but it was so utterly him that Blaine felt at home even more than he had downstairs. A burgundy typewriter sat on a little writing desk by the window looking out into the backyard, a piece of paper half-typed waiting for his fingers to return. Next to the machine was a stack of white and black sheets, something of a manuscript, and despite not having a literary bone in his body, Blaine itched to read it. There were books on most surfaces, but they were much more organised than in the spinney - held together by carefully chosen pieces of bric-a-brac, seemingly sorted by colour. There was an extensive closet, of course, and a gorgeous 1940s dressing table next to his bed.

What really caught Blaine was the wall above this bed. It was plastered with snippets of poems, some of which he caught words off of, and dizzyingly beautiful sketches pieces of prose. Looking at it made his head hurt in the best way.

“I like your wall.” Blaine blushed a little when he noticed how many descriptions of… someone who looked like him there were.

 _Shit._ Kurt had forgotten just how much he had written about Blaine. If he had known he’d be here he probably would’ve torn the whole thing down, but he couldn’t exactly do that now. “Oh, thanks.”

“Lots of things about brown eyes, huh?” Blaine gave him a look as if to say _when did you spend all that time looking at my eyes, hm? Why did I have to kiss you first?_

“Mhm.” He ignored the look and occupied himself with finding an old t-shirt he slept in in his closet, producing a fading red Gap one for him. “Here, this should fit nicely. Do you want me to-?” Kurt pointed towards the door.

“No, no it’s fine.” _Why did I say that? It is certainly not fine._

Sensing Blaine’s regret, Kurt interjected. “Okay. Well, I’m gonna, uh, change too, so, don’t turn around for a second.” They each kept to their ends of the room, back to back, and changed into their respective clothes. Kurt put on a pair of jogging shorts, much like the ones he had worn to the supermarket weeks ago, and an unflatteringly baggy grey t-shirt. It was frankly just a relief to get his ribs into something that didn’t make breathing feel like being stabbed.

“Kurt? Are you home?” Thankfully they had both changed when Blaine turned sharply at the sound of a woman’s voice coming from downstairs. Kurt just floundered, moving towards the door to call back. 

“Uh, hi mom! Just one second!”

“Why is she here so early?” Blaine hissed. He was clearly not ready to meet Kurt’s mother on the same day he had kissed him and been inside his house for the first time.

“I don’t know! Look, it’s fine, she won’t mind. I’m pretty sure she loves you already,” He whispered back, trying to remain as calm as he possibly could whilst seeing Blaine wearing his clothes.

“Kurt, are you alright? Why is the first aid kid out and… why is there so much blood?” Blaine looked back at him with confusion.

“What do you mean she loves me already?”

“Honestly, not important right now,” He would have to explain later why his mom knew the exact shade of Blaine’s eyes and hair and almost every detail about his eating preferences Kurt had described to her over the past two weeks. “Just one second, mom! Blaine’s here!” Blaine gaped at him, but Kurt just shrugged, clearly amused with his reaction.

“Oh! Alright… alright, honey.” They heard Elizabeth leave the hallway, clearly retreating to the kitchen or living room with no issue. Blaine was astounded by her calm; it occurred to Kurt that maybe the other boy was scared because he had never experienced that calm before.

“Why would you say that?” He kept his voice down, clearly slightly upset with Kurt’s admission - but Kurt simply took him by the hand and began to walk towards the door.

“Get over yourself. She’s fine, come on,” Blaine knew better by now than to fight with Kurt.

“Hey, darl,” The moment they entered the living room, hands now separate, Elizabeth stood and moved to hold Kurt in a hug. “Oh, you must be Blaine!” Any anxiety he had felt before about meeting this lovely woman faded the moment he felt the pure excitement she seemed to have at meeting him. Now the anxiety was just coming from not screwing it up.

“Uh, I mean, yes, it’s lovely to meet you, Mrs Hummel,” He extended a hand, ever surprised he was a willing handshake person, and, bless her, Elizabeth warmly took his hand in both of hers and shook it with as much motherly conviction as she would’ve conveyed in a hug.

“Oh, call me Elizabeth! If you don’t mind my asking, though, Blaine, why is my kitchen table covered in what I assume by his face is my son’s blood?” Although her tone was sweet, her narrowed eyes did scare Blaine a little. 

“Oh, well-” Before he could somehow embarrass himself, Kurt swooped in.

“I got hit by some asshole in town. Blaine cycled me home to make sure I was okay. He… actually, he punched him back.”

“It was self-defence,” He interjected, hardly processing the fact that Kurt had sworn in front of his mother without some kind of punishment.

“I’m sure it was,” Elizabeth winked. “Thank you for taking care of Kurt, though, it means a lot.” 

Blaine beamed, relaxing just a bit. “Of course, ma’am.”

“Blaine, please, it’s Elizabeth. Would you boys like something to eat?” Kurt looked sideways at Blaine for confirmation, knowing just from a movement in his eyes that the answer was no.

“I think we’re good, but I could go for some tea?” Kurt more so asked Blaine than his mom, nudging him with his elbow as if to remind him where he was. 

“Some tea would be lovely,” Blaine nodded.

“Why don’t you guys go back up to Kurt’s room and I’ll bring it up for you?” Blaine’s insides softened a little. This one woman was reinstating his faith in humanity.

“Sure. Thanks, mom.” Kurt leant forward to kiss her on the cheek before turning to leave, ushering Blaine out the door with him. Before he could steal him away, Blaine poked his head back through the living room door. 

“Thank you, Elizabeth.”

“No problem, sweetheart. Let me know if you need anything, Kurt!”

The moment they were alone in the foyer, Blaine was flat against the wall, nearly panting with relief. “Oh my god.” Kurt laughed a little at him.

“See, told you it’d be fine,” Before he could say another word, Blaine met his lips, pressing him against the bannister gently, careful not to crush his ribs. “Oh, I like it when you do that.” Kurt sighed once Blaine pulled back, arms resting around his shoulders.

“Yeah?” He asked bashfully.

“Yeah. Just maybe not right around the corner from where my mom is standing.” Blaine’s eyes registered where they were, and he muttered a short ‘shit’ under his breath.

“I forgot.” 

“One-track mind, huh?” Kurt grinned before taking him back up to his room.

For two teenage boys who had just discovered kissing, they spent very little time actually doing it that evening. It felt like any normal night in the spinney, changed only by the fact they were warm here, inside, and the punctuating kisses they shared each time the desire for one overtook them. The dynamic hadn’t changed, it had only gotten somehow better, enriched by whatever they were doing. Kurt cursed all the moments he had let pass without kissing this beautiful boy, and Blaine lingered on the promise that soon he wouldn’t be here anymore. He lingered on the prospect of telling him. 

“I should probably get going,” They were lying top and tail on Kurt’s bed, watching the scene from his window. He nudged Blaine’s shoulder with his foot.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Kurt pouted.

“Me too, but I’ll be back tomorrow, you know?” He lay a hand on Kurt’s calf, passing his thumb over the lightly haired skin once before pulling himself away and onto his feet.

“I know. I’ll miss you,” He sighed dramatically, and Blaine leant down to kiss the top of his head. “I’ll miss that, too.” 

“I know it probably wasn’t the right moment,” Blaine was standing on the doorstep, looking up at Kurt with an apologetic but still enamoured expression.

Kurt winked. “It wasn’t.” 

“Right, but I am glad I finally did it.” 

“Not as glad as I am. I can’t tell you how many times I almost have now.” _Yes, you do. There have been 8 times you’ve almost kissed Blaine, but you are not telling him that._

“Yeah, well, I get to hold it over you that I did it first for the rest of our lives.” As cute as Blaine was when he looked all smug like that, Kurt couldn’t help but knock him down a peg. It was too easy.

“The rest of our lives, huh?” Kurt bit his lip, feeling the heat on his face when Kurt simply winked back. The confidence of kissing him back was clearly going to his head, and maybe that was a good thing. “Come on, I’ll walk you out to your bike.”

They stopped awkwardly at the end of the pathway, feet shuffling in the lack of knowing what to do with themselves. “I would kiss you, but I’m a bit scared out here.” Kurt hardly whispered it - Blaine knew that, after earlier, it might understandably take a while for him to feel comfortable outside again, but he was as willing as ever to wait.

“Hey, that’s okay. I’m scared too.” He caught Kurt’s eyes again with a classic smile.

“Promise you’ll be back tomorrow?” Kurt asked, reaching for Blaine’s hand, which gladly accepted his.

“I always promise.” He let go of Kurt’s hand to mount the red bike, glad that somehow it hadn’t been chipped in the heat of the evening’s events. They shared one last set of smiles - smiles that promise more kisses and a new kind of friendship.

“Bye, Blaine.” 

“Bye, Kurt.”

The moment he shut the front door behind him, Kurt practically collapsed against the door with what he thought was a disgustingly dreamy sigh. In seconds Elizabeth was standing in front of him with a cheeky smile and a questioning stare.

“He’s cuter than I thought he’d be. You got lucky, hm?” 

“Yep. I got lucky mom.” Despite the eye rolls and happy grins, there was a small sadness behind it all. Kurt was struggling to puzzle out what all of this meant.

Before he could ponder that, though, his mother was placing her hands on his face and inspecting each scratch with vigour “Are you alright? How’s the pain? Do you need to go to a hospital?”

“Jeez, you sound like Blaine.” 

“Well, I’m just glad you finally have a… friend who cares about you.” She brushed his shoulders off, kissed his cheek once satisfied that Blaine had done a good enough job and cleaning him off, and left him to get ready for bed.

For a minute Kurt had almost forgotten it was 1977 before the searing pain above his eyebrow kicked in again and brought him back into his shoes. Blaine wouldn’t be easy, but he’d definitely be worth it.

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

Their new co-existence was only easy half of the time: the hard parts weren’t the longing they felt in the twenty-odd hours between their meetings or the coy smiles that urged them to kiss, just one more time. The hard part was fear. It was the way they had no choice but to keep a healthy two feet between them when they happened upon each other in town. It was the way Blaine could never kiss Kurt goodbye from his front doorstep. It was the way Blaine always had to be home before ten-thirty. It was the way Kurt froze up every time a fox snapped a twig or a branch shook in the spinney. It was the way both had started to experience these episodes of intense panic, where one would cry and heave whilst the other held him still through the shaking.

Amongst the pain, the fear, they still had each other. For a while, that would be more than enough.

What was particularly difficult, though, was the fourth of July. As Lima had done every year since its conception in 1831, a street party was held in the centre of town to celebrate what Kurt, honestly, saw as an excuse for rednecks to get drunk and ignore their war atrocities. What was hardest for Kurt this year, though, was watching Blaine. Whilst Kurt sat in the grass, having volunteered with the library to read stories to the town’s kids who were clearly bored out of their minds and possibly on the verge of heatstroke, Blaine stood just across the street outside of the grocery store selling red cups of chemical fruit punch and bottles of iced beer to the smiling patrons of smalltown Ohio.

Every now and then, Kurt caught a glimpse of his smile through the milling crowds of people walking up and down the long stretch of alley the stalls and picnics set up and down the road made, and was reminded of how sweet it might be to stand next to him. 

They had shared their first painful look when Kurt had arrived in the late morning to take over from the volunteer before him. He had caught his eye when Blaine was moving a crate of beer from inside the store onto the table they had set up outside and flashed a subtle smile across the street, to which he responded with a wink. Blaine had told him the night before that he had to be in town at eight to help set things up, not only for the store but for other businesses they were sponsoring to be there.

The fatigue in Blaine’s eyes told him that even by now, two hours later, it had been a long day. Whenever Kurt got the chance, between hastily read short stories and overly simplified picture books, he sent Blaine an encouraging smile across the way, relishing the way it seemed to straighten his back a little.

He was disappointed to see that Blaine’s hair was slicked tight to his scalp, obviously at the request of his father who Kurt assumed was the man wearing a suit ( _seriously? In ninety-degree heat?)_ and occasionally sending Blaine curt looks from wherever he prowled nearby. He almost perfectly matched Kurt’s mental image of him: grey-haired, gaunt, and inherently ghoulish. It was impossible not to notice the way Blaine flinched whenever the man came to retrieve drinks from the kiosk, only building the hatred he held with a quiet seething for him. Somehow, Thomas Anderson had already acquired a certain level of affluence in Lima - he was always surrounded by smiling elderly and middle-aged men and women, undoubtedly sharing what Kurt imagined was some sexist or racist anecdote, or maybe even something at the expense of his youngest son.

Kurt hadn’t really realised how much time he had spent staring at Blaine until much later in the afternoon when he approached him from across the road with a dripping red, white and blue rocket-pop as a cover to as if he was okay - despite his efforts to tone down the gawping, Kurt was clearly failing. 

“Mr Kurt, why do you keep looking at the drinks stand?” He snapped his head down to face the young boy sitting at his feet, who was waiting patiently for him to read Peter Pan from a horrifically sticky illustrated copy he had brought to Kurt from the tub of books sitting sadly abandoned on the sidewalk.

“What was that?” Kurt tried to ask with as little fear in his voice as possible.

“I said,” The boy giggled, clearly thinking Kurt, this silly almost-adult, was playing a game. “Are you going to read to me or not?” _Oh great, I’m imagining things now. Great._

After the mid-afternoon lull when everyone settled to their own picnics when Blaine had been dragged to eat with his parents and their friends (ostensibly miserable) and Kurt had sat with his own parents in the back of their truck sharing lemon bars and sandwiches, people began to flood the road in hoards, taking all liberties in setting up lawn chairs and picnic blankets in the middle of the street. For all of Lima’s small-town reputation, it was pretty well-known for its Independence Day fireworks. 

A hopeful side of Kurt dreamt that Blaine would by some miracle find a way to escape to come and sit in some secluded corner with him to watch them be set off. He knew it was unrealistic, and he rationalised his pre-emptive disappointment by reminding himself he didn’t actually _like_ fireworks (the sudden noises and garish lights weren’t really his thing), yet that small part of him held onto the teen-fantasy of it all. He wanted his share of that fantasy for once.

By seven the sun was setting, splitting the clouds in the sky into a salmon fish skin pattern. Standing at the top of the street, looking down on the waving sea of lit cigarettes and children waving sparklers that sent flames like fireflies into the air, Kurt wondered what it would feel like if he had his arms around Blaine’s waist right now. The scent of burnt sugar from cotton candy stands and clumsily poured alcohol choked him a little, only growing thicker when he wandered down the alley between the hunting store and the laundromat out to the fields where the fireworks were being set up.

He saw Blaine, not to mention his father and many other men of the town including Burt, setting up the fuses for the show. It’s not like Kurt had ever helped set them up before, but he rather thought that was it - no one had ever actually asked him. But Blaine, his… his boyfriend, _or something,_ who had only been in Lima for just over a month, was unspooling fuse wire with help from Kurt’s own father as if he had been doing it as a yearly tradition. It stung a bit, and he couldn’t help but wonder why it had never bothered him before. _Hey, at least his ass looks good in those jeans. Not much of a consolation though, is it?_

It was a while before Blaine appeared again; Kurt had lost track of him after he slipped back to his dad’s truck to look for booze. When Blaine finally appeared, assumedly tired of pretending to be interested in the military and _finance_ and whatever the hell else his dad had been talking about, his hair was free again. Wet and messy, but free. When he found Kurt sitting on a crate of disposable cups behind the candy apple stand, picking at his nails and clearly not nearly as interested in the prospect of fireworks as everyone else in Lima seemed to be given his back was turned towards them, he sighed with something like contentedness. _You’re a sight for sore eyes._

“Hey,” He said softly, trying not to spook Kurt as he approached from behind. He didn’t jump, though - he just looked over his shoulder, flashing a very small smile, and turned back to his fingers. He always did that, finding and making hangnails, when he was upset about something. “Are you alright?” Blaine pulled up another empty overturned crate beside him and sat, deliberately letting his knee slide against Kurt’s. He didn’t move away, but that might’ve been because he was wearing horrifically tight red jeans, and whilst Blaine was worried about his circulation, he appreciated the fashion choice. 

“Yeah, I’m alright I guess,” Kurt finally met his eye, letting his hands fall into his lap, and Blaine rested his chin on his fist with a goofy smile. It wasn’t that Kurt was just his eyes, it really wasn’t. It was more that every time Blaine saw those eyes he was reminded of everything behind them; he was reminded of all the moments they had shared already; all the kisses, long and sacred; he was reminded of all the ones he hoped to make, even in the futility of it all. He remembered Kurt’s outfits, the way his hair smelt after a shower, the way his skin felt under cold, numb hands. Seeing those eyes as they turned even then from grey to blue to green and back again was more powerfully symbolic than all the other things that made him think of Kurt.

“I guess I just wish we were somewhere… somewhere else? It’s stupid, I don’t even know where.” Kurt lifted his fingers to his mouth this time, beginning to gnaw the tip of his nail, but Blaine pushed them down again, taking one of his hands with care. They were out of sight here and, besides, everyone was too focused on staring at an empty sky to care what two teenage boys were doing.

“It’s not stupid, Kurt,” The way Blaine looked at him made him swoon a little, despite the frustration that had been building all day in his absence. “Actually, I came to find you for that very reason,” He said with a matter-of-fact tone. 

“Oh really? Are you going to fly us to New York like I’ve been asking?” Blaine rolled his eyes, grinning back at Kurt, who had finally noticed his hair which he mentally combed with his fingers. It was funny - Blaine had never really rolled his eyes before he met Kurt, but it was one of the many things he had picked up from him that added to his endearment.

“Unfortunately not quite yet. I was thinking we could cycle back to the spinney,” Blaine said, watching Kurt intently as he bit his lip. “I may have, uh, left something burning there,” Although Kurt’s expression quickly changed to one that was both concerned and questioning of Blaine’s common sense, Blaine just stood up and vaguely gestured for him to follow him down the street to where he had left his bike. 

“Burning? You didn’t make an effigy of your father, did you? Because honestly, that’d be pretty romantic if you ask me,” Blaine had to laugh at Kurt’s vivid imagination (frankly, it wasn’t the worst idea in the world) and Kurt smiled at the way his voice blended with the distant sound of ‘Daydream Believer’ playing from a car speaker in the field.

“No, no, God no, I wish,” He kicked the bike stand up and swung himself onto the seat, waiting patiently for Kurt to perch himself on the back wheel and press his chest up against his back, the automatic position they had assumed the few times they had ridden together. “You really think I’m that much of an idiot, huh?” Blaine glanced back at Kurt, who was settling his arms around his waist.

“Oh, sweetheart, no. I just think you’re a bit of a pyromaniac.” Kurt winked and Blaine sighed with what felt like the fiftieth eye-roll in the past ten minutes.

“Come on, asshole.”

When they arrived a the spinney, both Blaine and Kurt were glad to see nothing had burnt down. Their blankets and souvenirs hadn’t been reduced to ash, and everything looked almost as normal as usual, except that, now, Blaine had placed countless coloured candles around the area - a glowing perimeter around the pallets, hidden in the crannies of the oak tree, some even precariously perched on low branches - giving their shared home away from home an uncanny effervescence that only made it that much more beautiful.

As far as romantic gestures go, it wasn’t the biggest in the world, but it stretched Kurt’s heart miles more than he thought imaginable. He was pretty impressed that a., Blaine hadn’t set anything on fire and b. that he had found the time to do this and get back to him before the fireworks began. 

“Blaine…” He couldn’t help but stare, marvelling at the way the flames danced off of Kurt’s eyes, which were glazed with a film of touched tears. Kurt held his hand tighter, loving the sound like sandpaper of their skin moving across each other and the warmth his presence sent through him. “It’s so pretty.”

“I’m really glad you like it. I almost burnt my eyebrows off at one point.” Kurt looked back at him questioningly. “Yeah, best not to ask.”

They sat in their natural position, Kurt leant up against the oak cushioned by a thick pillow with Blaine’s head in his lap, an arm slung across his waist and his right hand brushing through his hair, still damp from what he assumed was a shower.

In a single deep breath, he realised that the emotions he had felt and feared and staved off throughout the day had dissipated, solely due to the way Blaine had decided to show rather than tell. It didn’t matter, not right now, that he couldn’t hold his hand whilst reading to the kids, or that he couldn’t kiss him in the library, because right now, here in the spinney, _they_ could do whatever they wanted. That was worth more than anything else.

“Are you Irish or something?” The sudden realisation that they were surrounded by orange, green and white candles broke the romantic train of thought.

“What?” Blaine just looked up at Kurt, clearly confused by where the question had come from. He kind of thought maybe Kurt had been thinking of something a little more profound in the moments he had spent silently watching their surroundings with a faint smile, what with being a writer and all.

“Well, all the candles are orange and green. I thought maybe you were having some patriotic streak in retaliation to the fourth of July celebrations.” Kurt looked back down at him, running his fingers through Blaine’s hair again, who closed his eyes at the contact. 

“Well, they ran out of red and blue, obviously,” Opening them again, he saw that Kurt was the one who was confused now. “Oh my God, you just said it. Fourth of July? You know, what we’ve been celebrating all day?”

“Oh!” Kurt leant his head back against the trunk of the tree with that adorable face he made when he had a realisation. It was also the exact same face he made when Blaine was explaining some random astrological fact to him - a little ‘o’ shape made by his mouth, eyes widened and a raised brow, the slow nod. “Oh yeah.” 

“Who’s the dumbass now?” Blaine asked, glancing briefly at the lips above him which were pulling into a smirk.

“Still you,” He learnt down to kiss Blaine, first on the forehead and then on the mouth, leaving his bottom lip a tint of red from gently sucking on it. Kurt loved the dazed look Blaine always had when he pulled back, eyes not far from crossing.

“I do love it when you do that,” He whispered and reached a hand up to Kurt, smoothing his fingers over the hair on the nape of his neck. 

“When I do what?” Kurt asked, tilting his head with that little cocky smile. 

“You know,” Blaine sat up and turned his head to reach Kurt’s lips again, enjoying the comfort that came with knowing almost everyone was in town - that no one would find them. “That.” Seconds of kissing turned into minutes, and soon they were both lying flat on their backs, breathing heavily and feeling each inch of the other with roaming hands, and in each boy’s heads the words ‘ _I love you’_ echoed over and over again. They hardly noticed when the fireworks started, far away enough that the noise was muffled by distance, but close enough that the coloured light reflected off of their skin. Forehead against neck, legs resting between his, torso leant up beside his heart, Blaine took it for granted that this might be the best it ever got. If he didn’t right now, he’d regret that he’d spent all their time worrying later.

“Not to kill the mood or anything,” Kurt began, breaking the breathy silence between them.

“Oh god,” Blaine groaned, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead harder against Kurt’s collarbone, mentally preparing himself for some horrible revelation - something along the lines of him being an awful kisser or Kurt realising he wasn’t actually gay. 

“No, no,” Kurt laughed, pulling Blaine closer with the arm resting around his waist. “I was just wondering…” He sighed, and Blaine held his breath. “What’s your dad’s deal?” 

The dread in Blaine’s stomach frothed, and he felt the acid in his throat all at once. He always felt this way when Kurt asked anything about his father - sick, tired, and, more than anything, scared. It was difficult fielding the extent of these questions - how intense could his answer be without scaring the man lying underneath him off? How graphic could he get without worrying him into pity?

He swallowed hard, trying, as ever, to push the feeling away - Blaine knew it wouldn’t end well for either of them if he kept hiding things, but it was still easier than honesty. “What do you mean?” His voice almost sounded like Kurt’s and, sensing his anxiety from his pitch, Kurt pressed his lips against the top of Blaine’s head.  
“I don’t know, he just seems pretty uptight.” He said softly. “Why’s he like that?” 

“He’s kind of always been like that.” Blaine sat up abruptly, shuffling back towards the cushions up against the tree and opening his arms for Kurt, who gladly let himself be held by the older boy like some kind of childhood teddy bear. It was clear he needed it. “I mean, he’s just always been distant. Stoic, I guess.”

“Good vocabulary,” Blaine gave him a semi-playful glare. “Sorry, go on.”

Blaine fixated on a spot over in the underbrush sweeping out towards the edge of the woods, trying his best not to think about the consequences of what he was and wasn’t going to say. “He was never really the kind of dad who told you he loved you, never really wanted to play sports with me or anything, ya know? He was always angry at something; usually my mom or me.” Kurt placed a hand on his jaw, which Blaine let rest there for a moment before moving his head away. Kurt understood what this meant, that it wasn’t a cold push away, but a plead for listening. By now he knew that wasn’t the kind of attention Blaine got very often.. “Cooper could do no wrong, obviously.”

“Cooper’s your brother, right?” 

“Right.” The silence opened up again, taught and heavy, and Kurt just waited patiently for whatever he was going to say next. Something was changing again behind those brown eyes. “Did I ever tell you about Mr Chips?” The slight smile in Blaine’s voice reassured him a little.

“Uh, no, but he sorta sounds like a kids TV presenter who…” Blaine’s eyes widened at the realisation of what Kurt was implying. 

“Oh, god no, no. He was our childhood cat.” Kurt smiled to himself at the thought of a younger Blaine with a cat, imagining the way he’d scratch behind his ears or rub his belly. That was something he’d have to see one day - it must’ve been why Blaine clicked with Nettie so quickly.

“That’s cute. What happened to him?” Blaine’s face dropped again with that query.

“My dad shot him.” Kurt pulled back immediately from Blaine’s arms, looking at him with shock unlike the usual Bambi-inspired surprise he usually had - whatever he had been expecting ( _maybe his dad accidentally ran him over, or he got lost and never came home_ , he had thought naively) it was far from that.

“Sorry, what?” _His dad shot his cat? Are you fucking kidding me?_

Blaine just continued without much hesitation. This was a wound he had licked many times before, repeated to himself in shock, although rarely spoken out loud to another person. “He shot him.” He gestured for Kurt to come back to him, which he did so apprehensively, gripping onto one of Blaine’s upper arms to steady both him and himself. “He got really sick when I was 10. He couldn’t really walk anymore or use the bathroom or anything, it was pretty sad.” Blaine peered down at Kurt’s face, making sure he wasn’t already crying - he knew how he got with sad animal stories - but he just looked up at him with a tender curiosity and a clear want to understand. “I knew he could afford the vet bills, we had a yacht for christ’s sake, but he said it wasn’t worth it. That he was a mongrel anyway. So he shot him. Right in front of me, too - I was doing homework at the kitchen counter and saw it through the window into the garden.”

The steely look in Blaine’s eyes worried Kurt - he was sure that if this was his story he’d be sobbing, but Blaine seemed to shut down for a moment, defeated in a way, and seeing that in someone who had so often turned the lightswitch inside of him on before was scary. If Blaine had given up, what would stop him from doing the same? Not exactly a healthy thought, but it scared him to think what it’d be like to go back to having no one, especially not having Blaine.

“Blaine… I’m sorry,” For the time being, Kurt just placed a kiss behind his ear and hoped he would get to do that for as long as he let him. 

“You don’t have to be sorry,” The emotion broke through that dam in his eyes, watering a little when he caught Kurt’s blues riddled with concern.

“I’m not sorry because _I_ did it or anything, I’m just sorry you had to see that. It’s not fair on you,” Kurt replied, giving him a sad smile. Blaine sniffed and pulled himself together - he would not let thoughts of his dad and memories of a dead cat ruin their fourth of July.

“It’s alright. It was a long time ago now,” He shifted a little, rearranging their bodies so that he was facing Kurt, foreheads touching and noses a hairsbreadth away. “Anyway, why are we talking about this when _we_ could be kissing?” 

Ever the typical teenage boys, they lost memories and made newer and greener ones under the shelter trees, surrounded by burning two-dollar candles, letting hands and lips roam to make up for the time lost to pain. Blaine tried to memorise every second, every breath he felt against his neck, every stroke of Kurt’s tongue, every butterfly kiss, every eyelash against his cheek, unaware that the entire time the other boy was doing the exact same, just without the same threat of the looming loss he had no idea was coming: Blaine knew there was a timer here; Kurt just wanted an eternity. They only stopped when one or the other’s hands drifted from under a shirt to the buckle of a belt - it was hard to tell who had done it, whose limbs were whose, but they both drew back with something simple in their eyes and the same question. 

“Have you ever…?” Blaine looked up, lips parted and almost trembling, wanting nothing more than to hear Kurt’s answer. For some reason, although he already knew what it would be, he felt unsteady. His eyes, darting to every point of Kurt’s face, were stopped when the man above him caught his mouth again, pulling back once he felt Blaine’s body relax again underneath him.

“No…” He straightened the bowtie Blaine was wearing, blue and covered in white stars. He had said the other day he was only wearing it because the store was making him, but he knew he loved it really. He had a secret preppy side he had been hiding from the world. “Have you?” 

“No.” Blaine rested a tentative hand on Kurt’s face, feeling the warmth of the light flush beneath his palm travel up his arm. 

“Do you want to?” Kurt asked, biting his tongue in order to maintain the eye contact that suddenly seemed so impossible. 

“With you? Yes.” He felt a pang of electricity in his chest, something like panic, and took a deep breath under Kurt’s hand. “But…”

“But?” Kurt looked anything but concerned or offended, smiling dreamily at Blaine and running his fingers through that hair again, trying to soothe him to the best of his ability. He moved over then, resting his head on Blaine’s shoulder and wrapping an arm around his midriff. He would wait, no matter what - Blaine wondered if things would be different if he knew.

“Is it alright if we don’t? Not yet, anyway.” 

Part of Kurt was relieved. He wasn’t exactly ready either, but it was strangely flattering that Blaine thought he was. He didn’t realise he gave off any kind of sexual confidence, but apparently Blaine saw that in him. The other part was excited, because Blaine had said ‘yet,’ and that meant he wasn’t going anywhere before the end of summer at the very least. “Hey, of course, it is, Blaine.” He moved his head back, going to lie beside him rather than half on top of him, but Blaine quickly raised his head and reached out to his arm to stop him. 

“No, stay there, please,” Blaine with a bashful smile. 

“Okay,” They resettled on the blankets, hands laced together on top of Blaine’s stomach, watching the now empty sky, strangely void of stars tonight. The candles around them were beginning to dim as they dipped further below the rims of the glass holders, a few blown out by the infrequent gusts of wind that swept through the night.

“What do you know?” Blaine asked, much to Kurt’s surprise, still looking straight up above him, transfixed on some imaginary point in the void above. “About _it_ , I mean.” 

“Um, honestly?” Kurt swallowed. “Not much. I mean, I know how it works, obviously, but…” Kurt sounded less than confident that he even knew that much. Of course, nothing had ever been said to him in biology, but, to be fair, not much had been said about heterosexual sex either. It wasn’t like he had… access to experience or, uh, much material, and he certainly hadn’t asked his parents. He had figured the basic mechanics from the little information he did have access to, but the thought of doing anything below the waist with another guy wasn’t anything he had any solid understanding of in the context of reality. He coughed a little at the thought. “I guess I’m just not sure how it all plays out in… in real life. What about you?” 

“I had some friends back in Maine who were pretty, um, open. They told me some stuff. Other than that, I don’t really know much either.” They held each other closer, and for the first time, Kurt didn’t have the automatic response of jealousy to the mention of Maine. He felt overwhelming gratitude that Blaine was here, not there.

“You’re my first everything.” Kurt blurted out before he could stop himself. He wasn’t sure if he was Blaine’s first everything, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be. He was insecure, scared that Blaine would find anything better than him, more experienced, and realise it was miles above whatever he had with Kurt. He liked the fantasy that Blaine had picked him despite knowing how else things could feel - Kurt had no point of reference, he just knew that Blaine was better than anything he’d imagined. Really, what he wanted was to be enough. 

“First kiss?” Blaine was smiling. He could hear it in the way he spoke - his voice always picked up a bit when he was happy, as if it had been possessed by a harpsichord. Kurt had gotten quite good at figuring out what he was thinking and feeling from the sounds he made alone. 

“My first kiss, my first hand-hold, the first person I’ve brought here, definitely the first person I’ve run away from in a grocery store…” 

“Very funny.” Blaine raised their hands to his face and kissed the back of Kurt’s, letting his chuckle fade into the humid night around them. 

“Blaine?” Kurt’s voice rang out like a bell into the grey darkness. 

“Kurt.” It was faint as a whisper but loud enough for only them to hear. Sometimes, their names felt sacred - this was one of those times. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Kurt let his fingers drift over Blaine’s chest, drawing patterns against the grain of his cotton sweater-vest.

“Of course you can, honey,” The sweetness of the endearment settled below Kurt’s lungs, empowering him minutely enough to ask what he had wondered since the first day they had met: why would someone ever come to Lima?

“Why did you leave Maine?” Blaine didn’t move, didn’t open his mouth, but Kurt was past the point of return now. “What happened in April?” There was still nothing, and the silence was hollow. “You don’t have to-”

“No,” Blaine’s voice came out harsher than he had wanted, making Kurt flinch away a little, but he quickly softened again, tone reverting to a more melancholy melody. “I want to. I…” His voice caught on something much more important than his ability to talk. 

“Take your time,” For a few minutes, they lay there silently, the only sound coming from the leaves that tumbled across the floor with every whisper of wind and the slow progression of Kurt’s fingers tangling and untangling through Blaine’s hair. 

“Cooper was home on leave one weekend. It was my mom’s birthday, it was meant to be a surprise and we… we were home alone.” Kurt didn’t need to force his imagination too hard to understand who ‘we’ referred to, and although there was a pang of jealousy, it was overshadowed by the anger he was beginning to feel towards all members of Blaine’s family. It amazed him again and again just how lucky he seemed to be - and then, suddenly, he felt guilt. 

“Shit, I’m sorry,” He buried his head into the crook of Blaine’s neck as if hiding from the complex things he was thinking. “I’m making you share all this personal stuff and I’m just lying here, listening.”

“It’s okay, Kurt.” As much as Blaine really did think he loved Kurt, he didn’t like this part of him - the part that was so self-conscious that it took every vulnerability as a jab to itself, the part that made it difficult sometimes to feel as though he could trust Kurt with the things that were going to happen. He knew, though, that not liking that part wouldn’t help anything if he couldn’t somehow overcome it. It wasn’t like he didn’t have his own flaws. “I want to share it. With you. So, Cooper came in all silent, expecting my mom to be home already. He has the assholish tendency to try and outdo everyone - he came in with a big bouquet of flowers, wanting to surprise her, but he found us kissing on the couch. I honestly thought he wouldn’t tell them, that for once he wouldn’t suck up to my dad, but he did.” Blaine’s voice broke with the stress of holding back hot tears and an even more insurmountable lump of anger in his chest.

“He did, and, of course, I earned a few bruises because of his indiscretion.” Kurt’s hand came to rest on the back of Blaine’s neck, letting his fingers splay over his skin in a soothing motion. “Cooper stayed in his old room the whole time, and I think a little bit of me broke when I realised that. Not because of the beating, but because he didn’t _do_ anything.” He wiped a hand across his face, smoothing the tears that had fallen down his temples back into his hair. He sped up, then, a silent plead for this agony to just _end_ already.

“And my dad decided that the best thing to do was it move me away from him. Said he was a corrupting influence or some bull like that. Lima had a house he liked and was close enough to one of his offices in Fort Wayne.” _And then he made me vow that I’d go to a Christian camp after I turned 18, and now I don’t know how to tell you that soon I’ll be gone, because I can’t lose them, Kurt. I can’t stand them, but I can’t lose the hope that one day I’ll be able to._ Except Blaine couldn’t bring himself to say that - he couldn’t force it past the selfish thing surrounding his heart, let alone his lips, and so the words stay sat like stones throughout his body, trembling and heavy and wholly unmoving. 

“I’m sorry, Blaine. I… you deserve so much better, you know that right?” He didn’t realise that Kurt was looking down at him now with those sad, soulful eyes, nose shadowed by the dying candlelight, perfectly prim and utterly beautiful in spite of who Blaine felt he himself was becoming - a liar, a perfect juxtaposition. 

“Mhm.” His voice came out like a gasp, acknowledging finally that he was crying. He let his person hold him through the sobs that came. 

“What was his name?” Kurt eventually asked, drying the last of the tears from Blaine’s face with his sleeve, past the point of caring about the dampness. 

“Sam,” Saying it in the past had felt like an admission of guilt, but with Kurt’s hands to ground him it just felt like a happier memory. “Sam Evans. It wasn’t anything serious, he was one of those friends I was talking about. He was my best friend, actually. I really miss him, Kurt. It was more of an experiment… for both of us. I, uh,” Blaine let himself look to Kurt’s eyes, and opened his own properly for what felt like the first and last time that night. “I didn’t feel the same way for him that I do about you.” In a more immature time, maybe five days ago, Kurt would’ve kissed him then. Instead, he settled his head back over his heart and felt Blaine breathe. “Can you tell me a story now?” They both laughed a little, and the tension left the air, replaced by the scent of earth and far-off smoke. There were only a few candles left now.

“A real one? Or something made up?” For a moment, Blaine wanted to ask what had happened at the cinema that day when Kurt’s shoulder had met the end of a knife. He hadn’t really formed a scar, but in the lucky moments he had been seen Kurt’s back exposed, close enough to see its tiny blemishes, he had caught the faint outline of the semi-formed letters. He would only give himself the right to ask about that when he had done him the decency of telling him about the end of summer. 

“Tell me something gorgeous, something that only exists here, with us.”

Kurt obliged.

  
  



	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING** CW for mentions of anxiety/OCD symptoms - I would also like to note that everyone's experiences with these issues are different, and the following is based on my own experiences with OCD and eating.

Naturally, the plan had been devised by Blaine. He was the less anxious of the pair, and, more importantly, overtly willing to protect Kurt from anything that threatened him - he had proved as much recently. At 8.45 on a Sunday night, the quietest showtime of all, Blaine and Kurt had arranged to meet outside of the AMC theatre in Lima. They would go into the film separately, only sitting together when they were sure it was safe to be seen that close to one another. 

Of course, Kurt had spent the hour before their date pacing around his room in the most inconspicuous clothing he could muster the strength to wear - a blue button-up shirt and black slacks, complemented by a red varsity jacket and matching canvas shoes ( _horribly plain_ he had complained to his mother). He was unfortunately no less anxious when he stood outside of the theatre, eyeing his surroundings with suspicion to be absolutely sure there was no one his age around to see them go in.

Blaine had lied, except this time not to Kurt. He had told his father, mounding on top of the increasing pile of church-related lies, that he was attending a lock-in in Fort Wayne with his church group. There’d be the singing of hymns, verse readings, etcetera etcetera, and he’d be home by three in the morning, which was enough to satisfy Thomas’ discerning glares. It was a well-crafted lie, as well - there actually _was_ a Fort Wayne lock-in that the church group one of his co-workers attended was going to.

He was nervous that they’d be seen, sure, but that fear was overwhelmed as ever by the thought of seeing Kurt - _his_ Kurt, as he loved to repeat to himself. When he finally sidled up outside of the theatre, bike-less for once, he could practically smell the fear coming from Kurt. He was relieved slightly by the sideways smile the taller boy gave him as they passed through the doors and into the darkened light of the cinema foyer, walking a good few yards apart so as not to even inspire a hint of inappropriate relations. Sure, they could just be friends seeing a movie, but with the ancient rumours surrounding Kurt, and Blaine’s outstanding reputation as the new guy, it was better to be safe than bleeding in a ditch. 

“May I have a salted popcorn and a diet cola, please?” _Of course, he’s a salted popcorn guy_ , Blaine mused, standing at the counter next to where Kurt was talking to an attendant dressed in a red and white striped uniform, some horrible amalgamation of candy-striper and a depressing teenage boy. He hadn’t realised the girl in front of him was ogling his ogling until she cleared her throat haughtily, prompting Blaine to swiftly turn his head towards her.

“Uh, I’ll get lemonade and some pork scratchings, please.” _Pork scratchings? Really?_ Kurt silently laughed at Blaine’s obviously loud choice of cinema snack, ever the exuberant type. His wistful smile was quickly replaced, though, with a nervous frown once Blaine turned to meet his gaze as the workers disappeared into a room behind the counter through a set of double doors.

“Are you sure about this?” He asked in an undertone, maintaining the distance between them despite the fact there was no one else in the lobby, which was blacked out by the screened windows looking out onto the street.

“Yes, definitely,” Blaine answered as soothingly as possible, noticing the way Kurt had pulled his sleeves down over his hands to pull at a loose string on his cardigan, something he knew from experience he would complain about later. “Hey, calm down, there’s no one here.” He gestured to the emptiness of the space around them, even doing a little spin on his heel as if to emphasise the fact that they were safe and alone, free to be as gay as they possibly could be. Blaine was doing a pretty good job already. 

“I know, but…” Kurt just stood, arms wrapped around his midriff, his foot tapping gently on the stained carpet beneath him, letting his silence finish the sentence. “You know.”

Blaine stilled. “I know.” Before he could reach out to comfort his boyfriend (they had settled on that label, irrespective of how silly it seemed if they couldn’t tell anyone) the doors behind the counter swung open, and the despondent teenagers returned with their drinks.

“What screen is, uh, ‘Star Wars’?” Kurt asked nervously, holding out his ticket in exchange for the brimming glass bottle he took thankfully from the girl. 

“That’ll be screen 2, sir!” She smiled brightly at him, a soothing reassurance that she hadn’t heard anything they had been saying. 

“Thank you,” He took the carton of popcorn into his arms and turned to walk over to where Blaine was waiting, just out of sight around the corner of the corridor leading to the screens. He stood leaning against the wall, head flung back and staring all too intensely at Kurt with a mischievous little smile. He seemed pretty proud of himself for figuring this out. 

“I'm not used to people calling me sir,” Kurt said quietly, still not entirely assured that they were alone, as Blaine picked up his feet and walked a pace behind him. 

“No?” _I wish I was holding his drink for him._

“Not really. People always think I’m my mom when I pick up the telephone,” Blaine laughed a little at that, earning himself a quick, scathing glare from Kurt.

“Sorry, it’s kind of funny,” He playfully nudged the back of Kurt’s heel with his toe and Kurt turned 180 to look at him, now walking backwards, with a condescending look.

“No, it isn't,” With his free hand, Kurt took a piece of popcorn and tossed it at Blaine, who protested simply by scoffing and going to jab Kurt’s side, exactly where he knew he was ticklish. The taller boy nimbly dodged him just in time - he was surprised by his own agility. 

“No, you're right,” Blaine looked him in the eye - “It’s not,” - and stole a piece of his popcorn. 

They stopped outside the doors to the screen, hesitating for a moment, unsure of the etiquette of the situation they had made for themselves. Who went first? Who came to who? What if the theatre was full of other people?

“See you in a minute?” Kurt proposed, anxiously shifting his weight from foot to foot. 

“Exactly. I’ll come to you, okay?” Blaine asked, holding the heavy swinging door open for Kurt to walk through - he noticed the way Kurt purposefully brushed his shoulder along his arm. 

“Yeah, okay,” With the flash of a smile Kurt, in all his colour-coordinated glory, disappeared into the darkness of the theatre. Blaine watched for a moment as he found a seat near the front of the screen - he was glad to see that there was no one else inside except for an elderly couple sitting in the back corner, obviously confused about what film they were here to see. He waited for a few minutes, perched on an armrest near the back, and let the opening credits roll on ( _A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… jeez, this is gonna be a drag_ ) before ducking down and finding his way to the front of the theatre to sit next to Kurt. 

Kurt whispered a small and hopeful ‘hi’ up at Blaine, as if he hadn’t been talking to him minutes ago, and moved his legs aside so he could get by him. For a while, they sat completely separate, careful and aware they weren’t touching each other, until all of a sudden Blaine’s pinky was inching closer to where Kurt’s hand was lying on the rest between them, and then they were holding hands underneath it, as casual and normal as they felt they could possibly be, and Kurt’s shoulders finally dropped as Blaine let out a sigh he didn’t know was there.

“This is kinda boring,” Kurt finally said about halfway through the film, looking over to see that Blaine was childishly enraptured. He had long ago stolen Kurt’s popcorn, which, from the rate Blaine was shovelling it into his mouth, was seemingly bottomless, and his wide eyes were fixated on the glowing screen in front of him. If it were anyone else, Kurt might be a little disgusted, but it was Blaine. It was always Blaine. 

“Are you kidding,” He said through a mouthful of popcorn, eyes only flicking briefly over to Kurt. “This is brilliant.” Kurt was suddenly grateful that they were alone in the theatre - the couple had left pretty early on, clearly unimpressed with all the lasers - because Blaine’s voice was above socially appropriate cinema-levels of volume with excitement. 

“It came out in May, Blaine, you know that right?” Kurt wasn’t even watching the film anymore; he had shifted in his seat so that he could look at Blaine from the side with a kind of wistful admiration. How could someone with greasy popcorn fingers and a kernel shell stuck to the side of his face look so cute, especially in _this_ lighting?

“Yeah, well,” Blaine looked at Kurt as if to say _I have superior taste in films, clearly._ “I was grounded in May.” Before he could see Kurt’s face fall a little he had turned back to the screen, resuming his munching and leaning back a little in his seat. 

“God, you’re a nerd,” Everything about Blaine fascinated Kurt - the way his hair fell like a separate entity to himself, how his lips curled one side after the other when smiling, those long and emphasised blinks he sometimes did, and especially the way he opened his mouth in a wide grin whenever he teased him. 

“Maybe, but you’re the one dating a nerd,” Kurt scoffed, and Blaine gave him a self-assured smile before turning back to Star Wars again, taking Kurt’s hand under the armrest. The look Blaine shot him when Luke and Leia kissed was enough to make up for any playful mockery.

When they finally left the cinema just after 11, the whole street had been extinguished of light, except for the beacon of the 24/7 diner that stood, ghostly, at the turnoff onto the interstate at the other end of the road. There was an automatic assumption that that was where they were going, and their feet carried them in idle conversation, closer and further apart in leisure than they ever could have been in daylight. Blaine was free to loop his arm through Kurt’s, free to spin away into the street as if to break into song, free to jump onto Kurt’s back and commandeer him into walking him half the way to the diner. And Kurt? Kurt _loved_ it. He loved Blaine. He loved seeing him at ease in a way he didn’t think he’d ever felt himself being, in a way he was scared he would never be. He loved thinking that life could be like this; dancing in the streets in the middle of a Sunday night after holding hands in the cinema. 

He couldn’t shake the dread, though. There was something there, under those glinting eyes, almost drunk in tone, that scared Kurt. It was the sort of look he imagined someone might have upon realising the freedom death could bring. He didn’t know what it meant, and he certainly didn’t know why he was met with a boneless silence every time he even alluded to his plans after summer. At this point, the thought of losing Blaine was akin to losing a limb, and it wasn’t because he felt reliant on him anymore. It was because with each day it was getting so much harder to imagine a life without him waiting in the spinney for him, or vice versa. In his mind, the spinney was symbolic of a home that they could one day keep. Kurt had found himself dreaming of children’s names and muddy pawprints long before he could stop the conscious thought of an impossible marriage from entering his monologue, which he hoped on an absent God would one day be their duologue. For now, he collected these moments like a prospector panning gold, hoping one day he might cash them in for a bigger dream: for now, he watched Blaine. 

“No, no, you cannot tell me that you think Luke Skywalker is hot when Han is _right there_ , Blaine,” He made a nervous giggle from where he meandered along the sidewalk, which was still radiating heat from the long day of mid-July sun, staring on as Blaine spun, arms in the air like a ballerina, alongside the gutter. 

“I dunno, Kurt,” Blaine called back, distracted by the concentration he was giving his footing, careful not to step on a drain grid - he knew things like that made Kurt anxious for all his superstitious tendencies. “He’s got that innocent-but-sexy look about him.” 

Kurt gaped back at him, amused by the momentary pause he had taken to wink at him. “Screw you.” Blaine finally stopped his routine and stepped back onto the pavement, waiting for Kurt to reach him before he slipped an arm around his waist, hooking his thumb through one of Kurt’s belt loops. Kurt gladly reciprocated by slipping his hand into Blaine’s back pocket, much to his pleasant surprise. 

“You love it,” Blaine said and jutted his chin out, the both of them knowing all too well what he was really saying.

“Yeah, I do,” The middle of the night sadly wasn’t enough to convince Kurt to kiss him, but Blaine knew not to push it. He understood the boundary and saw that he was pressed up against it already. Blaine was just glad that Kurt was here, let alone wrapped around him and walking down Lima’s main street in ways he had imagined whenever walking to and from work. Sure, the sun wasn’t hitting Kurt’s hair in the way he always imagined it doing, and he couldn’t prove to everyone that he was his, but soaking up a moment like this before they slipped away like a rug under his feet? That was god damn more than enough. 

Like all good things in their lives, the closeness didn’t last. Blaine understood why, twenty yards from the diner, Kurt abruptly unravelled himself from him, leaving both half-cold and all yearning. As they walked through the small parking lot towards the neon-lit door, Blaine noticed Kurt had stopped a few paces back and pivoted to see him stood firm besides a generic pick-up and wringing his hands. Blaine had never seen him look more unnatural, honestly - he sort of looked like one of those dolls lined with wire, contorted into vague assumptions of the human form. 

“Should I…?” His voice was lower, another difference between the two - Blaine seemed to sharpen when anxious, whereas Kurt’s dropped. There was no way Blaine was letting their night get screwed now, not by the threat Kurt felt at the hands of other people - he was determined to have one normal date, just one before he left. 

“Hey, no, it’s fine, honey,” Blaine didn’t miss the way Kurt gulped like he was swallowing a pebble at the affectionate term. He felt like there was sand in his eyes.

“Blaine, are you sure-” He sounded defeated now, and Blaine cut him off before he could spiral into the consequences of whatever he thought they could do wrong. 

“Kurt, it’s almost midnight. I promise you, there’s no one in there right now but truckers and druggies, and I promise neither of them cares enough to _do_ anything _._ ” Kurt still looked unsure, but at least he was looking at him now rather than searching the ground for ants. “We can just say we’re brothers if anyone asks.” Finally, the anxiety on his face cracked just a little, enough for him to roll his eyes in that trademark Kurt Hummel way and begun taking slow steps toward Blaine.

“Do you realise how that sounds?” He took a couple of steps forward, cocking an eyebrow. 

“Yes. I don’t care, as long as I get to go in that diner with you.” Blaine said smugly, and Kurt finally stepped up beside him and began to approach the diner, side by side, as they were meant to be.

“Did they put something in your lemonade?” Kurt elbowed Blaine playfully, and he wondered how he had gotten so lucky.

“Okay, alright, be quiet, you,” Always the gentleman, Blaine held the door open for his boyfriend, who stepped through with only a moment’s hesitation. They sat at a booth in the corner of the diner - the only other people in the restaurant were, as Blaine had predicted, the acne-scarred server, who donned an overzealous ultramarine uniform, and the assumed owner of the pick-up parked outside, who was hunched over a plate of hashbrowns and a yellowing newspaper crossword at the counter. 

“What do you want? I’m buying.” Blaine asked propping up a leather-bound menu on the placemat in front of him and scanning the rows of cheap diner food before him. He loved places like this - they were rare back in Lewiston, which was overpopulated by upscale restaurants and dinky cafés where you’d be lucky to get a decent cup of coffee. The food, however artery-clogging and salty, was the main attraction. 

But when Blaine asked that question, something seemed to hit Kurt, and now his hands were trembling and his face was paler than usual and and and. Now he was hyper-aware of every object on the table in front of them, tracking with his peripheral vision whether everything was where he felt it _should_ be. He adjusted a bottle of ketchup so that the label was facing forward. “I don’t usually eat out…” Blaine’s head snapped up as he placed the menu down on the table, smoothing it over with his hands in place of Kurt’s back. He found his feet under the table and held them between his shoes. 

“Oh. Crap, do you wanna go? We totally can, we can just go the spinney or back to yours, we could eat there, or I can just go home,” He stopped, peering down into Kurt’s face. He was still scanning the table, reading leylines and angles that weren’t there. He felt hopelessly and unexplainably on the brink of tears. In his mind, if he could control what was in front of him he could make up for the idea that he would be eating something neither he nor his mother had prepared. He could give up control in return for another kind, a bargaining chip he knew was illogical rationally, but was ruled by an irrational part of his psyche.

“Kurt? I don’t mind.” _Blaine is here_ , he reminded himself. Another thing he could not control, another thing that would slip away soon enough if he didn’t… Didn’t what? Prove himself? Kurt felt that empty sickness in the concave of his chest, but, like most of his difficult emotions, he pushed it down, just like Blaine did. _And Blaine is here_ , he reminded himself mentally, _and that is what matters right now._

“No, Blaine, it’s fine.” _I should count the sugar packets, just to be safe._ No, he didn’t need that. He didn’t _need_ it. If he had made it this far, he could make it just slightly farther. If he could eat popcorn he didn’t make, he could eat properly cooked food. _That’s not the same_ \- he pushed further - _yes, it is._ He perched a foot on top of Blaine’s and smiled. He let himself have this against the darkness of his thoughts. “It’s fine, really. I… I might get pancakes. My dad always steals mine.” Blaine smiled just a little, and the intrusive thoughts dwindled.

“Even though it's the middle of the night?” Blaine reached his hand across to the middle of the table and let it sit there, taking note of the way Kurt’s fingers twitched automatically towards his. 

“It’s never too late for pancakes,” The endurance was showing in his creaking voice, but a flash in his eyes reassured Blaine that this was what he was doing. He silently told him he wasn’t leaving now, that he wasn’t leaving ever. 

“Well, I’m getting a strawberry milkshake,” said Blaine with a childish smile.

“An interesting choice - am I gonna have to deal with sugar high Blaine?” Kurt remembered weeks before when Blaine had shown up at the spinney right after eating an ice cream cone and a lemonade pop and he’d practically had to pin him down to stop him from dancing around the clearing in that way he did when feeling particularly overjoyed. 

“Oh, absolutely,” Blaine looked back at his menu, absently scanning the items whilst Kurt took another inventory of his surroundings. The fluorescent lights weren’t buzzing anymore, or at least he couldn’t hear them, and the hard edges of every object had softened and blurred back to a comforting reality. Yeah, he could do this. 

“Um, actually,” Blaine looked up as Kurt began to spoke, eyes searching his face. “Do you wanna share some raspberry cheesecake? It’s kind of my favourite.” Blaine had to stop himself from grinning, and instead hooked his ankle around the table leg and pulled himself forward so their knees were brushing against each other.

“I…” He winked. “Would love to.”

They didn’t leave the diner until around one in the morning. Eventually, the trucker had left, and the spotty teen was replaced by an elderly man who seemed much more interested in listening to the radio than looking at them. Although Kurt had been apprehensive to eat at first, passing the hurdle of the first bite, and the realisation it wasn’t going to poison him, was enough to push through. He swore they must’ve shared at least half a cheesecake by the time they finally left. 

Of course, Blaine had insisted on walking Kurt home in spite of his protests that he should prioritise getting home before raising his father’s suspicions _(“I said I’d be back by three, Kurt. We have plenty of time.” “I know, but what if-”)_ and now he was actually glad he had Blaine with him. Here, under the lonely sky like set scenery hanging over the fields of Lima, he could walk arm in arm with his boyfriend and not feel as though he was about to be threatened. The cynical undertone had left with the intoxication of their happy night - right now, they were almost wholly free. 

“Do you think that guy noticed?” He finally asked, balancing along the edge of the trench that lined the road like a tightrope, grasping Blaine’s hand as he placed one foot in front of the other like a child. 

“Noticed what?” He queried back.

“Oh, you know…” Kurt sighed a little and shrugged, eyes and head rolling back to watch the stars. “How close we were?” Towards the end of the night, Kurt had, of his own volition, slid into Blaine’s side of the booth (apparently to try some of his milkshake, but Blaine personally didn’t see why he couldn’t do that from the other side of the table) - luckily, neither noticed if the server even realised they were sitting next to each other. 

“Honestly, Kurt, I don’t think he’s paid enough to care.” They walked together in content silence for a few minutes, breathing in the sweet scent of the summer night’s humidity and the pollen, under the blanket of the night. Blaine yawned once, and Kurt yawned back, resting his head on the shorter boys shoulder with familiar ease. 

“Blaine?” Kurt asked, the name coming out like a tender foray into a no man’s land they hadn’t broken ground on.

“Yeah?” He pulled him a little closer, snugly pressed up against his side now, and able to smell Kurt - that curiously enchanting scent of paperback books and concrete after the rain. 

“I’m sorry I’m scared all the time,” Kurt said quietly. The guilt was there in seconds, dizzying and all-encompassing in the way it surrounded Blaine, and he faltered a little in his steps. Kurt had good reason to be scared, he just didn’t know it yet. He knew this wasn’t about that, though - he knew Kurt was talking about the constant state of arousal, the unending jumping and years of enduring trauma. He knew it was about the aversions and the small coping mechanisms that mounted into something bigger and more unmanageable. He chose his words carefully.

“It’s okay. It’s not okay that you feel scared all the time, obviously, but it’s okay. I can’t say that I get all of it, but I promise to try to, and I promise to do whatever I can do to help if you want me to.” His heart-rate increased slightly in his own anxious predisposition when he was met by silence and a cold neck. Kurt was looking at the ground in front of them, eyes squinting and a blank expression, but he still kept himself closely knitted against Blaine.

“Why?” He finally replied, making sideways eye contact with Blaine, who was surprised by the amount of confusion he found on Kurt’s face.

“What do you mean why?” It came out as one word, a scrawl of emotion pulled from a well that had been digging itself inside of him. Kurt recognised the tremble of anxiety in Blaine’s lip and stopped them both to reach a hand up to his face, brushing his thumb over his jaw. Only here, in the middle of a moonlit country road, could they have such intimacies unhidden.

“Why do you want to help?” There was a flash of hurt in Blaine’s eyes as if pained by the idea that Kurt didn’t know - it was glaringly obvious, for starters, but the thing that hurt more was knowing Kurt didn’t understand why _anyone_ would help him. It hurt seeing the lack of value he gave himself. Sighing, Blaine took both of Kurt’s hands in his and held them between their bodies, before giving him a daring smile, dead in the eyes.

“Because I love you.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and it came out of him like it was the only thing he had ever been made to say. And, sure, Kurt’s brain was telling him that this was dangerous, that they’d only been friends ( _best_ friends) for just over a month, and that they’d only been kissing for fourteen days, but he knew it was true. He also knew he loved him back.

“Do you mean that?” He asked, even those weren’t the words he’d meant to say - they were the ones his brain told him to say first, and unfortunately, it often felt as if Kurt wasn’t the one making the decisions in that department.

“Of course I mean it. I don’t think I’ve ever meant anything that much.” If Blaine was hurt, he didn’t show it. He understood that for all he’d be taking from Kurt, giving him this was, in reality, another transgression - another misdemeanour that would hang over his head until some bible-bashing therapist managed to reprogramme the words etched behind his eyes. Besides, Kurt was kissing him. That was more than enough to take his mind off of it. The idea that Kurt was kissing him here in plain view (though, to be fair, the only building or sign of life for miles was the Abernathy farm whose porch light was still reverbing through the fields) was astronomical in the literal sense. 

“You make me forget where we are sometimes, Blaine,” Kurt said, finally pulling back but letting his hands stay clasped behind his neck.

“Good,” _Jesus, he’s cute when he’s smiling,_ thought Kurt. “I promise one day we’ll actually be somewhere else.” It was a playful promise, one Blaine knew might never be fulfilled, but both took it at face value for this moment.

“New York?” Kurt laughed in response, and instead of rolling his eyes, Blaine found himself biting his lip in spite of his smile and nodding.

“Hey, I’ll go anywhere you want,” he said, and kissed his boyfriend again.

It was only the next day that Blaine took it upon himself to visit Kurt’s parents. He was anxious, naturally, and his father’s years of drilling had trained him to think that the best way to impress Elizabeth and Burt would be to wear as much gel as physically possible (even though he knew Kurt would scold him afterwards) and make sure his collar was buttoned-down and ironed with liquid starch. As a result, he didn’t really look like the self he had been learning to accept and love recently, at the hands of Kurt, but when the voice of a stern man has been left on repeat for the past seventeen years, you learn to trust it regardless. 

He knew Kurt was already down in the spinney - he was always early - so he figured he’d have a window of opportunity just before seven where he could speak freely without the added pressure of worrying about Kurt. He knocked twice before he even realised he was in front of the Hummel’s evergreen front door.

“Hi there, Elizabeth,” His voice came out much more properly than he thought it would, but he was comforted by the appearance of this woman who he had learnt to speak to over the past weeks. She wore a pink cotton apron, wavy hair tied up loosely on her head, and had flour all down her front (alongside a small sprinkle on her cheek), and her warmth was obvious from the moment she greeted him. 

“Blaine!” She smiled immediately, of course, but then quickly her face grew worried - a harsh response to the years of Burt showing up at the door to relay that Kurt had ended up in hospital once again. “Oh, Kurt should be waiting down in the spinney for you - did something happen-”

“No, no!” He interjected quickly, and she visibly released the tension from her face. “Uh, actually. I was just wondering if I could talk to you and Mr Hummel?” She could clearly hear the apprehension in his voice, so reached out a hand to rest on his shoulder.

“Of course, you can, darling. Call him Burt, please, he’d be mortified by anything more formal.” Blaine nodded and let himself be led into the front hall by Elizabeth, politely removing his shoes but declining to take his coat off, stating that he wouldn’t be long. He was happily surprised to find Burt in the kitchen _also_ wearing a pink apron, sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he haphazardly rolled out what looked like pie dough on the kitchen counter.

“Burt,” The man hadn’t realised they had come in yet but was happily unembarrassed by his shock when he turned sharply to see his wife and a rather dapper young man standing in the doorway. “Blaine was wondering if he could talk to us.” 

Burt’s eyes widened in realisation, and then he was grinning widely and stepping forward to shake Blaine’s hand, even though his own was still covered in flour. “Oh, of course. Hey kid, it’s nice to meet you properly. I saw you down at the street party yesterday - you did a great job.” Despite the comfort that Blaine felt just being in this house, that seemed planets away from his own, his heart was still jumping inside of him, constricting further at the contact with Kurt’s father. His handshake wasn’t too firm or sharp, though, but sort of more like a hug that Thomas Anderson had never given him. 

“Thank you, Mr Hummel. It’s great to meet you too,” He was clearly still tense, and so Burt gestured for him to sit at the kitchen table.

“Please, kid, call me Burt.” He patted him on the back and moved around to sit opposite him, elbows resting on the table and hands clasped before him. For a moment, Blaine feared he was about to cry. 

“I did tell him that,” Elizabeth teased as she picked up a wine glass from the sideboard and sat at the head of the table - Blaine tried to blot out the memory of the fit his dad had thrown when his mom had last sat in ‘ _his spot_ ’. 

“Of course!” He smiled, watery though it was, and they just looked back at him with open faces, clearly expecting him to ask his question. “Well, uh, I was wondering if I could talk to you… about something.” Burt sighed a little, and the fear crashed in a wave against Blaine’s ribcage. 

“Listen, Blaine,” As Burt began to speak, Elizabeth placed her hand over Blaine’s and gave him a concerned smile. “Please don’t be so tense, you’re making me nervous.” They all laughed a little, but it fell a little flat on Blaine’s discomfort.

“Kurt’s told us a bit about your dad - he sounds like a real piece of work,” Elizabeth said, and Blaine’s shoulders dropped a little, partly in shame and partly in relief.

“Seriously Blaine, you should’ve heard what I said about what I’d do to him the other night, but I don’t want to overstep. I know it’s tough, it must be living with a man like him, but I promise we’re not like that. This house is a place you’re always welcome, kiddo. We’re not gonna throw you out because of who you love, even if it is our son.” Burt said, looking him straight in the eyes and Blaine tried to will the tears in his eyes to fall back inside of him, but Burt kept talking. “It might be a different story if you hurt him, but I don’t think you’ll do that, will you?” 

“Oh, quiet.” Elizabeth swatted her husband playfully. “Honestly, Blaine, no matter what happens with you and Kurt, our home is open to you. We can understand.” Blaine knew Burt was joking from his tone and that Elizabeth was sincere in hers, but the fear was almost too much to bear, contrasted by the overwhelming and unfamiliar love he felt, and he had to take a second to wipe his free hand over his face. 

“No, no I’d… I’d never hurt him,” Lying had never made him feel so sick. He could say to himself that he wouldn’t hurt him _intentionally,_ that this wasn’t intentional, but he knew he was making a choice between a chance of redemption in his family’s eyes and self-acceptance - it was just the wrong one.

“Well, that’s good, but what is it you want to ask us?” 

“Uh,” He hesitated for a second, searching for the words, and Elizabeth urged him on with the small pat of her hand. “I really hope I’m not crossing a line here… and I- I don’t mean anything against you guys or Kurt or anything, I’m really just… just worried about him. I just want what’s best for him.” They both gave encouraging smiles, clearly not frustrated by his dancing around the subject. “I think that, maybe, Kurt should see a therapist.” Neither of Kurt’s parents looked surprised, more so intrigued.

“Okay, is there any particular reason for that, sweetheart?” Elizabeth asked gently.

“Well, I… I really like Kurt. I really, really want him to be as happy as possible-”

“We know, son,” Burt’s affirmation emboldened him a bit - Blaine was pretty sure his father had never called him ‘son’, or, not in living memory, anyway.

“Right, well, he seems to be having some issues with… being anxious a lot. And when we do things, like when we went out yesterday, he can get really nervous about his surroundings and… I guess he tries to do things to control it? Like counting stuff and repeating the things he does, that sort of thing. He can be a bit superstitious, I guess, and at first I thought it was, you know, kind of cute. But I can see now how hard it is for him. He’s always there for me when I get really low or-or panicked, and I try to be there for him too, but it’d kill me if there was a way I could get him more help, like talking to you, and I didn’t do it.” They were all silent for a moment. “Again, I really hope I’m not over-stepping-”

“Hey, kid, you’re not. I think me and Liz are just a bit shocked that… that you really care that much about him.” Burt said with as much sincerity as he could muster. “Obviously that’s not to say _we_ don’t, or anything, we’re just really glad he’s found someone like you, Blaine.” The boy nodded, pretty obviously still worried that he had crossed some invisible boundary of what he was allowed to say and do, as if one misstep would have him removed. 

“I hope he won’t mind me telling you this, but he’s actually been in therapy for quite a while now,” said Elizabeth. She took a sip of her red. “I’m actually a little surprised he hasn’t told you.”

“Oh,” Blaine’s head flooded with a million reasons Kurt might have chosen not to tell him, and clearly the parents in front of him recognised the look in his eyes from their own son. 

“Hey, I’m sure it’s not for any bad reason,” Burt began, this time putting his own hand on Blaine’s shoulder, leaning across the table. “I’m sure you know stuff has been pretty difficult for him, not just now but… you know. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a little scared to tell you. I’m sure he will in his own time, and I know for a fact how glad he is to have you there looking after him,” Blaine nodded, smiling faintly when he realised Burt and Elizabeth were holding hands under the table. He had never felt so connected, so as a part of a real family, as he did sitting at that table, and this was his first time speaking to one of them. _Do I even know what a family_ should _feel like?_

“You have no idea how much it means to us that you would ask after him, Blaine,” From the emotion and ghosts of tears in Elizabeth’s voice, he had some idea. 

“I know Liz already said this, but if you ever need anything, if you ever need help with any anxiety you may be feeling, Blaine, we’ll be here for you too.” He couldn’t help but let out a silent sob, body jerking forward a little, when Burt said that - his hand remained steadfast, and Blaine lost all words. 

“Thank you, both. I just… thank you.” Elizabeth stood and began to lean down next to him, but he had already stood to meet her in a hug that felt long overdue.

“Of course, honey,” She held him at arm’s length and kissed his cheek, brushing a loose curl behind his ear as she did in exactly the same way Kurt did. He had her eyes, too, and his dad’s smile. Blaine couldn’t remember ever seeing himself in his parents - he was scared that one day he would.

“Alright, well, Kurt’ll probably be raising the hue and cry any minute now, so I’d run along if I were you, kid.” Burt said, pushing his chair back and standing with the rest of them. 

“Yeah, I’ll get going,” He turned to leave through the kitchen door but stopped at the threshold to look back. “Thank you, both of you.” They nodded and smiled, and that was enough. 

When Blaine stepped out into the front yard, he realised how this _could_ be his life. Somehow, this crazy configuration - him and Kurt, his parents-in-law baking pie through the kitchen window, a home of their own - could be his.

But only if he made the right choice. Only if he pushed.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING** very, very light petting at the beginning of the chapter and sexual innuendo, but nothing explicit. very much still T-rated.

For a while, Kurt let himself get used to this. As the blurred lines of summer grew longer and bled into the hot air around him, he let himself be more honest than he could ever recall having been. It was the calm that intoxicated him - his newfound ability to synchronise his breathing with the press and fall of Blaine’s chest against his back, the lack of tides in his stomach when he touched him now. That calm didn’t help the hanging cloud dissipate, though. Like something from a gothic novel, they stood over him, a constant reminder of what could or would happen when Blaine inevitably left. That’s what Kurt assumed he would do, anyway - it’s not like he had suggested he was planning on doing anything else.

One night, when Kurt had holed himself alone up in his room, hastily leaving his parents on the back yard’s veranda to share the cherry cobbler he had made, he stole tears away from the time they had left together. He had caught his mind lingering on the fantasy that Blaine would stay here; a perpetual grocery store attendant, there to soothe Kurt and he Blaine, spending each night in their immaculate conception of a domestic life branded with teenage dreams. It was a selfish fantasy, Kurt admitted, to limit him that way, keeping him as a polished doll. He justified it like this: Kurt had found something that he had seen as alien and unattainable for so long, so he’d be damned if he was going to just let Blaine leave now. Fantasies always ended in tears, and he was sick of it. He didn’t want him to leave, even if that was selfish. Besides, Kurt didn’t know the half of it, and Blaine knew exactly when he would come clean. Now it was a waiting game, as it always was. A cruel game. 

It would all end in tears anyway - by the time Kurt had shaken the thought from his brain, Nettie’s fur was damp, the cat curled up in his lap and licking the side of his thumb in a feeble attempt at comfort. The ideal of this other world where they could exist faded with every day they spent together.  _ There is no place in this world for us,  _ Kurt had thought.  _ So stop thinking like there is. _

“What if someone catches us?” Blaine had asked him the next morning in between Kurt’s hot breaths against his neck, the light marks he left that would later bruise showing up even in the darkness of the storage closet at the back of the Lima Library. For now, Kurt could settle for this - stolen kisses and daring moments snatched away under the nose of his fears (and Allison.)

“No one’s going to catch us, I promise,” Kurt kissed him before he could say anything else, pressing his body against his so that Blaine would flatten his back against the shelf of book covers and spare pens that stood behind him. The shorter of the two, clearly feeling the need to balance their dynamic, took the lapels of Kurt’s jacket in his hands and gently pushed him back against the opposite wall with bright wired eyes.

“How do you know?” Asked Blaine, before pressing his lips against Kurt’s pale jaw, now flushed a beguiling pink. His clothes smelt like sweet honeysuckle - he didn’t know how Kurt managed that. He always smelt of shaving cream and hair gel, even if Kurt insisted on telling him he smelt of sweet, romantic things.

“I know because,” he gasped. “Because I’m the only one who comes in here.” Kurt still hadn’t learnt to catch things like that before he said them, and so earned a well-deserved raised eyebrow and amused smirk from his boyfriend. He just groaned, rolled his eyes in his trademark way, and gave him a shove small enough to ensure Blaine didn’t stray too far. 

It wasn’t that when they met a few nights later Blaine was late. It wasn’t even that he looked dishevelled or anxious under the cover of their trees. Blaine looked fine, a normal perfection the younger boy had come to adore and expect. Yet it was clear from the moment he stepped into the clearing, Kurt finally looking up from his book to meet his boyfriend’s eyes, that he was anything but fine. 

Maybe it was the way he was carrying himself, slightly leant forward, his centre of gravity slumped, or the way that his eyes had the tiredness that warranted being bloodshot, and yet weren’t. Kurt closed his anthology of Ginsberg poems quietly and stood to take him into a hug, one that by now was routine, but it was as if Blaine didn’t even see him, or realise why he was here. He just sat down on the pallets that had been pushed up against the base of the oak tree and pulled his knees to his chest without so much as a miss-breath, making no effort to acknowledge that Kurt was there.

“Hey, you,” Kurt tried not to be frustrated, even though sometimes his personality betrayed him in making him prone to the rare throes of passion. Blaine had dealt with enough of his own drama, lovingly and tenderly drying his tears. He had even sung Paper Moon to him once - he had earnt his own right to self-pity, and even if he hadn’t done those things, Kurt was still going to listen to and help him. He let his arms drop from hugging position into the pockets of his tweeds and swayed a leg forward, nudging Blaine’s tennis show with his brogues. But he didn’t look up. 

“Hi.” His voice was as untelling and unyielding as his body. He didn’t sound happy, sure, but he didn’t sound sad or frustrated - he sounded like the dial tone that Kurt had nightmares about, ringing through an empty house as he lay helpless on a death bed. He liked the monotone in his clothes, but he hated it in voices. It unsettled him, and hearing it from Blaine knit his stomach. 

“Are you… are you alright?” Instead of sitting next to or parallel to Blaine, as he usually did, he sat cross-legged in front of his knees and gently placed his palms on each of his boyfriend’s knees, softly pulling them down so that he mirrored his position. Blaine didn’t flinch. “B?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah,” said Blaine, finally looking Kurt in the eyes. His immediately filled with water when they focused on the boy across from him as if he was looking at the sun out of a pitch-black room. Kurt was unsettled, mostly - even when Blaine was low, he was still passionate, moving, speaking. He wasn’t the silent type, and the withdrawal was scary. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” Kurt smoothed his hands over Blaine’s trousers, soft and brown and military clean, ripples in the fabric lying flat against his shins, but Blaine didn’t shift his gaze from his eyes. He trapped them, their storminess, tried to organise and memorise them for the coming months. “Blaine?” He finally blinked, an unintentional tear noticed only by Kurt escaping the tear duct of his right eye and leaving a clean trail behind it against the dust that had been kicked up into his face on the bike ride over. Kurt had to restrain the impulse to brush it from Blaine’s cheek. 

“What?” Blaine asked, and swallowed, his voice surprisingly thick. There was something in his brain that he couldn’t quite articulate, a sorrow founded entirely by himself and unfounded in Kurt’s mind, entirely his fault. As much as he was blameable, no one tells you how hard it is to admit to yourself that your pain is your own fault. Blaine was going to hurt them both, but his mind was made up. In his eye, it was too late. “Sorry, I just…” 

The thought was interrupted by Kurt reaching for his limp hand mid-sentence, holding it tightly between his white-knuckled fingers. “It’s okay. Did your dad say something?” Blaine said nothing. “I knew I shouldn’t have left those marks,” he said, raising his hand to touch Blaine’s neck as if to fuss over the bruises he had left there like a concerned parent, or as though to erase them with a swipe of those tragically delicate fingers, but Blaine moved sharply away from the suggestion of his touch.

“No, no he didn’t…” Blaine’s face softened, eyebrows dropping and his mouth a sullen downwards curse, when he noticed the hurt in Kurt’s eyes. It was mainly misinterpreted concern, actually. Blaine had learnt to leap to the conclusion that he had been the aggressor, because, soon enough, he would be. “It’s okay, Kurt. I just wanna… I just want to be with you right now.” He struggled to force a smile. It felt wrong being here in the spinney, and not in the usual way - it didn’t feel wrong in that he felt guilty of afraid, it felt wrong because he knew he  _ was  _ doing something wrong. Being here was a transgression against what he had with Kurt, another example of how he was ruining it, but he was still here, and the lies were piling, the fog wouldn’t clear, and his parents weren’t any more forgiving than they had been months ago. He wanted to be here, with Kurt, but he wasn’t.

“Well,” said Kurt, once again taking Blaine’s hand and rubbing it between his hands. That had worked before, tethered him back to the earth when Blaine seemed ungroundable. “You’re here with me, and I’m here with you. What do you want to do?” He brought his fingertips to his lips and kissed them gingerly, slightly salty and calloused but still so eloquently  _ Blaine.  _ Except Blaine wasn’t home - his body was vacant, he was watching like a remote control.

“I’m sorry, could we just… just lie together?” His question was proposed like a child asking a parent for some ice cream after supper, so innocent and void and pure that Kurt, ever willing to just be with Blaine, felt his heart drop - because this wasn’t Blaine. He didn’t ask why, where he had gone, what had changed, because, Christ, that was a scary thought, and Kurt’s mind was having a field day imagining the possibilities behind Blaine’s eyes. Had he decided to go to university after all? Was he going to move to Europe or something? Join the army like his brother? Worst of all, Kurt imagined he was staying here after all. As brilliant as the fantasy was, polished like the pearl of the ocean and placed above all other jewels of his mind, it terrified him, and not only because he feared his reaction to such an idea could be whatever Blaine this was.

“Oh, of course,” it was impossible not to notice the crease in his brow. “Yeah, of course.” Kurt began to shift, untangling his legs and moving to Blaine’s side where he would position himself lengthways beside him, but a tender hand placed on his shoulder stopped him short.

“I’m… really sorry, Kurt,” he whispered, clearly on the edge of tears - Kurt could tell from the way his voice creaked ever so slightly, like the door to the upstairs bathroom in his house. He imagined Blaine as the flickering light on the other side of that door, unsure of its fate and wavering through life with simple inconvenience. He couldn’t stop the sigh escaping, and placed the back of his hand on Blaine’s forehead. Kurt shook his head with a sad smile.

“Hey, there’s nothing to be sorry for, silly.” There was a beat, and then he gave himself permission to kiss Blaine’s forehead as he usually did each night without fail. He didn’t miss the way Blaine’s eyes closed as his lips pressed against his temple, or the short shudder under his breath, but he let the image pass through his mind like white noise. “Let me get you a pillow.” He bit back invisible tears and learnt to grab a cushion to place behind their heads, settling behind Blaine’s crooked body once he had laid down. Blaine faced out into the woods, clearly searching for something that couldn’t be there, and Kurt had to steel himself to drop his gaze to the back of his neck. The only comfort he had was his hand lacing through his when he slung his arm over his waist.

“Thank you.” Blaine’s whisper was almost inaudible, and the words lay sugar-coated. 

Neither said much for a while after that. For once, the silence came and went, flowing like the stream of consciousness they shared like twin brains, was suddenly interrupted by a dam. It was an unfamiliar sensation, so they held each other a little tighter as if trying to paste some unspoken essence back together. It was almost an hour later, an expanse that felt like years but fell flat against the context of Blaine’s mental countdown to his eighteenth birthday, when Kurt was roused by the sound of sharp breaths. They weren’t unlike the ones he experienced in his worst moments, but he hadn’t heard anything quite like it from Blaine before.

“Kurt…” Blaine was crying - it was a role reversal, sure, but Kurt wasn’t unfamiliar with his tears - sadly, far from it, but there was usually a clear build-up to this moment. Something would happen, whether it be his irrational over-wrought brain caught on a customer’s offhand comment or the actions of his father, and Blaine would slowly grow worse, and in those moments, Kurt knew. He was prepared to deal with it, prepared to hold him and comfort him and promise him beautiful things neither of them had any business promising, but here he was helpless, ambushed, even. “I…” Kurt wasted no time, though, in sitting up and rolling Blaine onto his back, watching as his shining eyes came to reflect the stars above that he loved so much. He tried to discern what was wrong in the same way Blaine could read the sky.

“Blainey, hey, what is it?” The endearment was saved for moments like these where he knew Blaine felt vulnerable - the comfort and closeness of a pet name soothed each mental or physical wound the other had, but they’d never repeat them outside of the woods.

Blaine repeated himself, even his voice sounding nauseous. His hair was strangely shinier than usual as if he had awoken abruptly from a cold-sweat nightmare, but that didn’t stop Kurt from running a hand through it. He untangled the remnants of gel he had applied that morning - he still hadn’t managed to convince Blaine to go cold turkey. “Shit.”

“Do you wanna sit up?” There was a pang of guilt in Kurt now - he felt as though he was treating Blaine like a child, cooing and comforting, half envisioning himself fetching a bowl of ice cream and a hot water bottle. Whatever Blaine’s fever was, it wasn’t breaking.  _ Maybe that’s what it is, maybe he’s just ill.  _

“No.” A new wave of tears broke over his face, bringing Kurt closer to the edge.

“Okay,” he replied, panic clear in his voice - if Blaine had noticed it, though, he didn’t react. “What’s… um…” He didn’t know where to put his hands now and had them raised awkwardly, splayed out as if he were trying to put out a fire which, in a way, he was.

“I love you, Kurt,” Blaine’s bottom lip was quivering and, for a moment, Kurt entertained the horrible thought that he was about to tell him he was dying.

“Is that such a sad thing?” His hands settled finally on his own legs, bystanders to the uncontrollable situation in front of him.  _ God, I feel like a teenager.  _

“Don’t…’ Blaine sighed and sat up, knotting himself again by bringing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. The sleeves of his sweater, both pulled down over his hands in a comfortingly childish manner, were darkening with tears - there was that pang of guilt again, in both of them. Kurt wondered what he did when he felt like this at home. “Please don’t joke about it.” He sniffed and held his eyes shut for a brief moment, attempting to clear them of an anonymous fog through which he couldn’t see Kurt clearly.

“Sorry. I’m sorry. You know…” Kurt moved again, pressing his back up against the trunk of the tree and pressing his side closely against the warm ball of teenage boy curled up beside him, trying to peer into his hidden face. “You know I love you too, right?” It was the first time Kurt had said it out loud. The words were true, sure, and he had thought them plenty of times before. They even sounded perfect coming out of his mouth and reaching Blaine’s ears in solemn confidentiality. Nevertheless, they felt and sounded inadequate here.

What had he done?

“Not really,” He was crying into his hands now and the release was scarily sweet for Blaine. It was just scary for Kurt. Had he not done enough to make Blaine feel loved? The question felt like a needle pressed into the back of his neck, like a piece of shrapnel just below the surface of his skin, forever itching and impossible to answer.

“Hey, Blaine, Blaine,” Kurt tried to catch his own breath between the waves of anxiety in his blood. “Please calm down. What’s wrong?” He didn’t expect Blaine to burst in the way that he did, because, the instant he placed a tentative hand on his shoulder, he unravelled like the coil of his mother’s measuring tapes. He almost flattened - the crying was silent now, legs stretched out in front and arms deflated in his lap.

“I’m just… tired, Kurt, I just want to go…” He struggled with the words for a moment, trying to rearrange them into an intelligible semblance, before continuing with a softer tone. “Somewhere else with you. But there’s nowhere else. Not for us.”

“That’s not true.” Kurt was quick to interject - they were both crying now, alone and together in these untouched woods with only a camping lantern and a battery-powered radio. Not much had changed since that first day, really. They could dress the spinney with packing crates and coloured candles and scraps of magazines, but it would never be a home. It would never be filled with the things that made, in their eyes, a family - no children or hamsters, cats or dogs or lawnmowers or bathroom sinks, or windowsills with pies or first aid kids aching for new bandages or rolled tubes of toothpaste. It would never be filled with that light, reserved for an unjustifiably favoured crowd. 

“But it is, Kurt. You know it is.” There was a scent of venom in his voice, but it was gone before it could evolve into anything that really scared either of them. What was there undoubtedly was his fear, blended with Blaine’s voice into a perfectly horrible amalgam of everything Kurt feared and loved.

“Blaine, stop. Please, I… you’re making me feel anxious,” he said, the hurt never more evident in his voice. That’s what turned the switch in Blaine’s brain. Suddenly his hand was over his mouth, eyes serious and trained on Kurt, and he had sat up to lean towards him to hug him. There was no subtext. He held Kurt’s head with one hand in the crook of his neck and gasped his words. He was a fish out of water.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know you love me, I do, that’s not your fault, please don’t think that’s your fault. I’m so sorry.” Blaine felt Kurt’s hands waver above his shoulder bones before he grasped them - for a second he feared that he was going to pull Blaine away, which admittedly would have been justified, but Kurt just held him closer against his body. “You… do so much for me, Kurt. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s all so selfish, I… I’m just…” Blaine wrenched himself away to look at Kurt’s face, tearstained, red and blotchy, his cheeks rosen in a newly picturesque way. He wondered why they didn’t have any polaroids together and kicked himself again. “I just don’t know how to… I… it’s always in my head and-”

“You’re okay,” Kurt brought him in again, answering Blaine’s silent stuttered questions. “I’ve got you, and you’ve got me. I promise that we’re going to be fine.” He felt the small round of Blaine’s chin bobbing up and down against his shoulder, and held him long past what felt natural.

They didn’t uncoil themselves from each other, though. They laid face to face, no barriers between them, sprawled out and one on the blankets underneath them. “You know, I’m going to marry you one day.” Kurt tucked a piece of hair behind Blaine’s ear, a casual familiarity that calmed his proposition. He meant it.

“What?” His chest lurched a little, but Blaine had to smile, amused and enchanted by this… by Kurt.

“I,” Kurt began, stretching out a little before relaxing again, like a cat in the sun.  _ Home really is wherever I’m with you, Blaine.  _ “I am going to marry you one day.”

“Um,” Blaine began through an unstoppable grin. He really couldn’t stop it, but before he could suggest how ridiculous his boyfriend was being, Kurt interrupted him again.

“I am.” Blaine raised an eyebrow, gave him permission to postulate in the way Kurt always did, weaving those beautiful but impossible realities for him, that existed momentarily between them and the future. They disintegrated as easily as cotton candy and cobwebs, though. “I’m going to wear a kilt, and you’ll be in some beautiful Saint Laurent suit, hair half gelled. I was thinking maybe we could do it… in a meadow, like the one out there. Loads of folding chairs but, you know,  _ chic  _ folding chairs. A nice big arch, loads of wildflowers on it.” He finished with a wink, and Blaine gave him that wistful look that suggested he had forgotten the laden anxieties of the past hour. Kurt always managed to do that to him - make him forget.

“Mm. No gel.” Kurt raised his eyebrows, pleasantly surprised. He was always surprised by Blaine. He wondered if he’d ever stop surprising him.

“Yeah? I think I’d like that, actually.” He glanced over at him, and Blaine nodded for him to continue. “Okay, uh… well, my parents will be in the front row, obviously. And all our college friends - don’t laugh - will be there too. My mom will give you away because she adores you, B. And my dad will give me away, of course, and then. Then we’ll be married. In front of everyone.” The idea of that exposure terrified them both, but the warmth of Blaine’s hand on the small of Kurt’s back, and Kurt’s resting on his cheekbone, the idea of a world where that exposure was even possible, was more than enough to bolster the dream. 

“So what’s the colour scheme?”

“Uh… huh. I haven’t thought about that.” Blaine gaped at the admission in disbelief - Kurt hoped he hadn’t seen his wedding scrapbooks on the spare occasions he had been in his room.

“Really? Kurt Hummel hasn’t thought about the colour scheme for his wedding?”  _ Our wedding _ , they both thought. Kurt blushed, thankful that is must’ve been dim enough that Blaine couldn’t tell (he could tell.)

“Okay, well, I was thinking about a mint blue… or robin blue? Oh, paired with white, of course.” Blaine considered, and Kurt watched the way his eys flashed between the colours behind his imagination. He had never so desperately wanted to see whatever Blaine was seeing in this fabricated wedding. 

“I like mint,” said Blaine. His boyfriend was more than satisfied with the short response. He was just glad Blaine was talking again.

“Yeah, me too. And we can have little french pastries -  _ petit fours - _ for dessert.” Blaine laughed under his breath at Kurt’s mock French accent, because Kurt was only ever perfect, even when he wasn’t.

“Can we have potato salad?”

“What?” Okay, clearly he hadn’t been expecting that, but at least now they were both laughing, and the air was clear and easy again. The mundane aspects of a wedding, the potato salad, somehow made it more special. No - it made it more tangible.

“You know, potato salad, at the uh…” Blaine was still blanking on words, but Kurt filled his gap seamlessly.

“The reception?”

“The reception, yes. I really like potato salad - I don’t think you know that, actually.” He giggled a little at his apprehension, and Blaine rolled his eyes for the first time that evening, and he was finally back in his body.

“Of course we can have potato salad.” He shuffled forward, knees knocking against Blaine’s, and shifted his hand from his face to the side of his neck. He could feel the pulse and shallow breaths under the muscle there, begged God to never let them cease. “We should get rocket pops too.”

“Mhm. And raspberry cheesecake.”

“And blueberry and almond muffins.”

“And popcorn.” Kurt deadpanned at Blaine’s suggestion.

“Okay, popcorn would be weird at a wedding.”

“Hey, it’s not like our wedding isn’t gonna be breaking plenty of norms anyway. Popcorn is the least of our worries.” And then Kurt was scrunching his nose in that trademark disapproving way and Blaine just had to kiss him.

“Touché.”

They looked at each other with intent and it felt like the first time they saw each other all over again. The sounds of light breathing and the woods surrounding them fell on deaf ears, for Kurt could see made-up fireflies buzzing in Blaine’s eyes, and Blaine saw shooting stars in his.

“I’m going to marry you too, Kurt,” he said, settling his gaze on his lips.

“Well, marriage kind of has to go both ways,” Blaine scoffed, but Kurt continued with a serious glint in his eyes. “I love you, Blaine. I do.” He kissed him with firmness and surety, but neither was sure who had kissed first.

“Why?”

“Why?” Kurt repeated, brow furrowed. 

“Yeah, why do you love me?”

“Well, I think at first a bit of it was that you were the first gay person I’d ever met apart from me.” Kurt stopped for a beat too long and Blaine’s face fell.

“Oh-”

“No, no, I said at first,” Blaine had to stifle a laugh at Kurt’s shocked face, but nodded for him to continue. Kurt had to focus on the trees behind him to get the words out. “It scared me for a bit. I thought that maybe I was just... Yeah, you know. But uh, I…” He took a deep breath in. “Every time I hear you talk about something, even if it’s dumb like Star Wars or Elvis or if it’s fascinating like astrology, I love to hear it.” He refocused back on Blaine, surprised to find a cocky little smirk instead of some tender expression. 

“So, you love me because I love Star Wars? Are you saying you love Star Wars?” It took every bone in his body to not hit Blaine with the cushion under his head, instead opting to push him square in the chest.

“God, you're insufferable sometimes,” Blaine just kept laughing. “I love you because… I started to think or, I guess, imagine anyone else saying those things, and I don’t think anyone else could make me so interested in  _ Star Wars _ . I don't think anyone else could make me feel so right being with them, just being. And it's not even that I’m scared I wouldn’t be able to find someone like that anymore, because if I can find  _ you  _ in Lima, I can find other people like us out there. But I'll never find anyone like you. I love you because I can’t imagine any replication of you, honestly, and even if I found one I’m… not sure I’d want it. So, why do you love me?” Kurt was clearly trying to swiftly move on from the declaration, and so instead of verbally acknowledging the new threat of happy tears, Blaine just tried to reciprocate.

“Well, I want to say the same reasons as you, because… yeah. I have the same reasons. But also… also, you're just, God, you amaze me. You're amazing. You've been through so much stuff and… and it doesn't define you. You’re so much more than... you’re just… your spirit is just… yeah,” Kurt was smiling, starry-eyed. “I’m not a writer like you. You basically beat words into submission, which is another pretty amazing thing you do, but I guess, yeah, part of it is the way you love me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. You care about me even when it's obviously hard to. I'll never be able to thank you enough for that. I love you, Kurt.” 

“Blaine… I still…” He tried to ask, but the words didn’t come, and Blaine didn’t need them to.

“I know. I’m sorry, I am.”

“I know you are. What am I meant to… I mean, what am I meant to do? I keep torturing myself, Blaine, thinking about what I’ll do without you. I don’t even know if I’m going to be without you. It’s not… I’m sorry, but it’s not fair.” 

Blaine had checked out of his body again, now. He saw himself walking, to and from places, between neon truck stops and hard shoulders, flicking through motel room bibles and waiting in airports for someone who would never arrive. Why was he doing this? Was he doing it because he thought it would  _ work _ ? Because Blaine knew it wouldn’t - Blaine knew that conversion therapy was just a fancy word for torture. He’d heard the stories, knew that at the very least it was just an attempt to push him closer to the edge of Christian martyrdom. Was he doing this so that he could earn his family’s love, or was he doing it as a self-punishment for whatever way he had failed them since the day he was born? He used to know. Months ago, he knew why he was doing it, but Kurt had blurred that line too. 

It was easier to shut down on the world, resign himself to whatever this would be. That was why. That was enough as to why, for him. And he would never forgive himself to leaving Kurt, but at that moment there was no alternative. Wasn’t there something, in maths or science, that said the simplest solution was the right one? 

He hadn’t noticed that Kurt had drawn him close again, pressed up against his body and breathing steadily into his cardigan. 

“It’s okay, Blaine.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know you are.”

It was hours later when Blaine woke up. At some point they had fallen into simultaneous sleep, rhythms matched and entwined, and as much as Blaine wanted to stay, memorise the few freckled constellations scattered across his face and the exact shade of his skin in the moonlight before he lost the ability to do so forever, he knew the consequences, long and short term. So he decided to wake Kurt.

“Kurt? Hey, Kurt, honey?” He shook him by the arm carefully, noticing the way his eyes fluttered a little, releasing the blue of his eyes for just a second before closing on him again. 

“Hmm, Blaine?” He pouted, then sneered, eyes still closed in protest and voice laden with the weight of sleep and unexpressed sadness. Blaine’s insides burnt up a little.

“It's really late, Kurt, we gotta get home.” Kurt’s eyes opened then, concern for Blaine clear even in the midsts of his granted frustration with him. 

“Oh, shit… Blaine…” Despite the concern, Blaine could tell by the way Kurt said his name that he was about to ask him for something. Something cheeky.

“Kurt…?” He crossed his arms, standing over him now with a curious expression.

“Will you… you know… carry me?”  _ Cheeky little bastard, _ Blaine had to think to himself.  _ Still kind of cute though. _

“I’m two inches shorter than you,” he pointed out, gesturing to himself. 

“And? What’s your point, Blainey days?” Kurt gave him a sly smile, reaching his arms up and making hands at Blaine to presumably pick him up like a baby. 

“Okay, whatever. C’mon, help me out here.” Blaine let Kurt wrap his arms around 

“Huh,” Kurt said, shuffling a little in Blaine’s grip as he began to walk through the surrounding trees out into the surrounding meadows. Dawn hadn’t broken yet - it could only be two in the morning, and yet the surrounding fields were doused in another kind of peaceful blue twilight, the grass velveteen in the ashen sunlike moon. Blaine breathed, felt the weight of this boy in his arms, and tried to remember another time where he had felt so at peace.

“What? Surprised?” Blaine shifted from one foot to another for a second, adjusting Kurt’s position in his arms a little. He was soft and pliant, still half asleep and glowing in the dark, and he could feel his nose against his collar bone.

“No, just… comfortable.” 

Blaine gave a short laugh. “Mhm. I'm sure you are, K.”

It wasn’t long before he was standing under the porchlight next to Kurt’s front door, still holding him awkwardly in his arms and looking in through the marbled glass windowpane. “Are your parents asleep? Kurt?” It was then that Blaine realised Kurt had managed, somehow, to fall asleep. He hadn’t realised how tired he was, hadn’t even cared to ask when he arrived. It stung again. “Shit. Oh.” Luckily, when he tried the door he realised it had been left unlocked. For a moment Blaine wasn’t sure whether he should be nervous that that Hummel’s home was left unlocked, but then remember they were in the middle of nowhere, and that it was probably left so that Kurt could get in when he returned later that night, and, brain lidded with sleep, he decided to just enter as quietly as possible.

He had been here enough times to remember where Kurt’s room was, and climbed the stairs as nimbly as possible with a 5”10 teenager in his arms. When he reached his room, he was glad to be met by the familiar childhood glow of a bedside table lamp and the humbly overwhelming scent of the Hummel’s detergent. The moment he set Kurt down on his bed, pushed up against his bedroom window, he rolled over, away from Blaine.

“Oh, nice one, Kurt.” He said it with loving humour and turned away to leave back through the door he had come, noticing only now with awe that it was covered in more postcards than it had been the last time he was here. He was startled when he heard a small voice from behind him.

“Blaine?” It prevailed through the countryside buzzing silence and found his ears.

“Yeah?” He didn’t turn back but imagined a sleepy smile instead.

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” He had never meant something with such force. 

“Turn the light off.” Blaine chuckled quietly, reached across to the lamp switch, snapped it shut, and stepped through the door. 

“Night, Kurt.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I wanted to make a quick note explaining some things in this chapter.
> 
> Some of the conversations/behaviours in this chapter are unhealthy in terms of romantic relationships, but, like any relationship, especially one in the context Kurt and Blaine find themselves in here, they are also complicated and nuanced.
> 
> Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, but no one deserves to feel inadequate or unloved in a relationship - both Kurt and Blaine are dealing with personal issues affecting their ability to be in a healthy relationship, and if you find yourself experiencing any of these, please address them with your partner or a psychologist. We are lucky in the 21st century to have more access to information about these things and services that can help us with these issues - these were not things available in 1977 small-town America.
> 
> I want to reassure you that things will become healthy - both characters will progress and learn, and I promise that the relationship they end up, in the end, will not resemble the unhealthy aspects you may have noticed here. It's not going to happen overnight, though - this fic is pretty angsty, but is ultimately a character study into both Kurt and Blaine within a context even worse than the late 2000s and early 2010s. 
> 
> I really hope you're enjoying it and continue to, even if it makes you sad - I promise, the payoff will be worth it.
> 
> Thank you for your love,  
> milkpaper


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're gonna pretend i haven't been gone for 24 days 😼😼 
> 
> this is a bit of a filler chapter - much fewer words than most of them - but is still important.  
> this is as explicit as the fic will get nsfw wise - it is very tame, only implied right at the end, but nothing actually happens except some kissing and light petting haha.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

The fantastical vows they shared that night, childish or not, weren’t brought up again. They stayed unspoken along with any subject pertaining to the future - and, for a while, that was alright. Blaine lived and breathed his guilt, felt the nausea of conflict at each turn, and never forgave himself. Kurt found ways of quelling his apprehension in looking at his boyfriend’s eyes. He couldn’t see them properly anymore - they were so often clouded with a nameless anxiety, something about ageing and moving in new unfamiliar ways he hadn’t been told about - but the glazed bronze of Blaine’s irises was enough of a reminder that, for the meantime, he was right beneath him. They both got worse at hiding the monsters of emotion, though only at the end of their evenings - they were always carefree, ignorant, until the time for Blaine to leave arrived.

On some level he admitted was slightly selfish, Blaine wished that Kurt would miraculously understand. He hoped that he would see the way in which he yearned for the relationship Kurt had with Burt and Elizabeth; see how, for his addled and unvalidated teenage mind, that was worth all the suffering in the world. As summer ebbed on, though, Blaine’s love for Kurt grew in harmony with his confusion, waxing with the moon and founded in his unwavering sense of insecurity. He no longer had any expectation for Kurt to understand - he had prepared for rejection, even on some violent level involving never seeing him again. After all, his willingness to attend this therapy had to somewhere be linked to his sexuality. Naturally, Kurt would assume that his resignation to his father’s wishes was a sign of his lack of love for the boy. Yet, even more selfishly, Blaine still loved Kurt: that is where the conflict came from. He loved Kurt in spite of the fact he felt he shouldn’t. He was torn between two new worlds that in his mind were as stable as playing card houses. He wanted the best of both, partially in denial of his father’s threats of disownment and wholly aware of what he was asking of Kurt. For now, he could only savour the precious moments he had left. The battle in his head was an untouchable maze he wasn’t ready to venture into yet. 

That’s why Blaine was slightly disappointed to find that Kurt wasn’t where he usually was one evening. It seemed they were quickly approaching the end of August, which meant two things: one, that it was almost Blaine’s birthday with all of its unshared connotations, and that, two, Kurt would soon be going back to school. Both knew and mourned the fact that’s they’d have less time with each other, Kurt just didn’t yet know the degree to which their time would shorten.

Instead of finding Kurt perched on the cushions laid out in the spinney, his smile and quiet exuberance filling the space, Blaine was met with heavy, hot buzzing air and a white envelope placed carefully under a smooth pebble. For a brief and wild moment, scenarios of break up letters and court-signed restraining orders flashed illogically through his mind, but he brushed them off in favour of actually  _ opening  _ the envelope. Blaine didn’t have the time for the luxury of empty anxiety anymore - he had learnt to press it down. 

There was something serious about the white folded card he held daintily in his hands, a refreshing sense of professionalism and suavity against their usually rustic surroundings. His name was written in a stylish cursive on the front, a very unsurprising heart punctuating the ‘i’ in the middle. It signalled some sort of formality in their love he hadn’t felt before, a tangible thing he could feel against his fingers and keep to remember. For the first time, Blaine seriously considered whether Kurt would write their wedding invitations one day. He immediately recognised the paper and script inside from the poems tacked up on Kurt’s wall, written on the clunky but well-loved typewriter that sat next to his windowsill on a writer’s desk he had picked up at a flea market with Burt. Kurt had let him use it once when he had asked - Blaine’s father had one, but of course never let anyone but him so much as touch it - and he had savoured the heavy sound of clicking under his fingers, quickly adjusted to the formatting of the letters, loved the abrasive sound of the register and the playful ‘ding’ that rung out each time he began a new line. Much like it, the note was short but sweet:

**_Hi Blaine!_ **

**_Sorry I’m not here to greet you - I’m sure future Kurt is missing you right now._ **

(Blaine’s heart lurched in his chest - Kurt didn’t even know the half of it.)

**_I’ve sort of got a surprise for you… There’s something waiting for you in the place we first met. See you soon!_ **

**_Love, Kurt_ **

Blaine wasn’t entirely sure why he was crying so quietly - maybe it was the touching nature of the note, imbued with Kurt’s voice in a form he wasn’t used to hearing, or maybe it was the bitter irony of this scavenger hunt. Either way, they were soft and carefully spent tears, quickly absolved by fast-moving hands brushed across his face. He shoved the letter into his pocket. He knew immediately exactly where Kurt meant - the stalls outside the supermarket where he had first crashed into him with a crate of milk bottles - because, of course, Blaine had wondered more than once whether they would’ve met without his clumsiness, concluding it was likely they would have given Lima’s size. He wasn’t sure, though, whether any other meeting would have had the same outcome. There was something horribly romantic about meeting someone by chance clumsiness. 

The thought that this boy may not be in his life scared him, and so instead of lingering in the empty clearing, Blaine retreated to the red bike leaning against the Hummel’s white picket fence (he was careful never to chip the paint - he knew Burt hated painting the posts more than anything) and began to cycle towards town. He took a shortcut through one of the vacant grazing fields, hoping to no avail that it wouldn’t be long before he got to Kurt. As much as he loved this, it was Kurt who he wanted to spend time with… yet he couldn’t help but love him a little deeper for putting what he knew would be an intangible amount of effort into whatever he had planned for him.

By the time he reached the grocery store, the sky was purple. It was mainly empty in town now: the only people out at this time on a Wednesday night were tired alcoholics and teenagers walking home from summer jobs. He was happy to see Allison through the window, where she was stacking paper towels on a 50% off display, smiling out at him, and reciprocated a short and enthusiastic wave. Blaine was also happy to see his second envelope resting underneath a peach in a crate full of the fruit, shining out at him - this time Kurt had only written B on the front, clearly attempting to forgo any accusation or association between them both. June seemed so long ago now, buried in the soft autumn-scented dirt of their mid-August exploits, and it was nice to revisit for even a moment the image of milk crawling down the pavement cracks, and the way it had felt to touch Kurt’s hands for the first time.

The second note was much more anonymised than the first:

**_My dear B,_ **

**_I know that memory isn’t the fondest, but it’s one of my favourites; remember the place where we first kissed?_** ** _Exactly_** ** _there?_** (Kurt had underlined the word a few times in fountain pen - Blaine could tell it had smudged and imagined the look of frustration on Kurt’s face when he realised the ink had run.) 

**_I’ll see you soon._ **

**_Love, K_ **

How could Blaine forget? It had been both his best and worst memory in his time with Kurt; the blood had stained the picture, but those first few electric kisses he collected like badges of honour would never leave his lapel. And Kurt had been perfect, even in his field of vision, edges blurred with anger and pain, under the cover of a rushing stream. He didn’t have time to say hello to Allison, even when Blaine noticed she was approaching the shop door in the corner of his eye - there was only one place he wanted to be right now. Home. 

It didn’t take long to cycle to the clearing by the stream where they had been that evening. It hadn’t been by any means cold, but the air always felt clearer and frostier by the water. Blaine was surprised to find that, for once in the many times they had returned to and walked along the water since, he wasn’t cold. He was warm, and the warmth only grew as he left his bike to retrieve the final letter. The envelope was a sunny mustard yellow this time, perched between two slabs of rock lying close enough to the water to feel the spray of the irregularities of the running stream, but far enough away so that the envelope was untouched, still dry and crisp between his fingers, and all the more sacred to him. 

**_Hey, daydreamer (remember when you first called me that?)_ **

**_You know the hike we went on last week? We passed an old barn over by Milbourne Farm. I really hope you can remember where it is - because that’s where I am._ **

**_Waiting for you, as ever,_ **

**_Kurt_ **

It took everything in Blaine not to run - the barn wasn’t far from here, and every instinct was telling him to avoid all bodily obstacles that could stop him from being there as soon as possible. He knew rationally, though, that the bike was quicker, for all its physical inconvenience. Again, it didn’t take long for him to find the track, and in enough time Blaine was biking through the woods along the trail they had taken days before towards where he knew Kurt would be waiting for him with agile patience. He had always admired that about Kurt; he could be stubborn, sure, but the stubbornness came from a place of intense stronghold values - his patience with whatever he was forming in his mind was immaculate. Blaine’s thoughts wandered, as if he had any control over their path anymore, to that question gnawing at the back of his mind. Would Kurt be patient with this? 

Blaine knew he had no right to ask that of Kurt. If Blaine was really doing this, and it seemed that he was, if he was really going to this camp, then… then a part of him must have expected it to work. If it worked, there’d be no more Kurt. No more spinney. No more picnics and scavenger hunts and Sunday evening cinema trips - and Blaine couldn’t blame that on anyone but himself anymore, really. This was his final stand. His hours with Kurt were numbered, and it wouldn’t be long until he could count them on one hand. 

By the time he rounded the corner leading him out of the woods and into an infertile farming field with one lonely barn standing in the corner, he was biting back tears from an unknown source. Blaine felt apocalyptic here: the ground was dry, hard and cracked and grey in the quickly fading summer’s eve, and the tired ashen barn on the other side of the field stood like a hollow beacon, glowing amber light emanating from the barn doors and the second-floor window. He saw the figure of a boy, a simple silhouette, in the yellow-lit window, looking out from the barn, like an all-seeing third eye. Blaine cycled hard and fast, face dry and sun fading, and let his lungs fill with water.

By the time he reached the barn, doors now tightly shut, golden light spill from it’s hinges, Kurt was sitting cross-legged on the hood of his dad’s station wagon smiling over at him. There was nowhere to leave his bike, really, and Blaine didn’t want to approach the barn yet in fear of ruining the surprise, so, for once, he let the red sheen lie on the ground amongst dying hay and grasshoppers. It was worth it.

“You found me, then?” He was startled to hear Kurt’s voice so near, near enough in fact that Kurt could easily take Blaine’s arm in his hand and pull him away from the bike. There was something a little domineering in his eyes tonight, softened by the adaptive kindness of his face, but Blaine was glad to be led into his chest. “Hi.” 

He was slow to look over Kurt’s face: the crooked angle of his kempt eyebrows, the soft buttoned slope of his nose, the rose of his cheeks, the cracked innocent smile on his lips. He was quicker to pull him into his arms, resting his chin upon his boyfriend’s cotton-scented shoulder and savouring the sensation of Kurt’s chin pressing against his neck. He hadn’t hugged him this hard before - he didn’t know why. He regretted it. 

“Hey,” Blaine’s voice was barely a whisper against the sound of faint jazz playing from somewhere behind the barn doors. He could smell limes and cane sugar, but maybe it was just the romance on the air. Either way, Blaine wanted to burn it in every room of his house.

“I missed you,” Kurt prized himself back a little, with no resentful thought for the boy in front of him - he simply wanted to see his face. “You didn’t take as long as I thought you would,” He hadn’t expected Blaine, honestly, until it was pitch black - it was only really dusk now, and it brought out the apple of his cheeks and the line of his jaw. 

“I missed you more,” Blaine replied. His lip wavered a little and mirrored the movements of the taller grass surrounding them, but tried to settle with the worried look in Kurt’s eye. He wouldn’t cry now. He wouldn’t, but the silent willing wasn’t enough to stop the tears from forming in his eyes. 

“Are you-” He kissed Kurt before he could ask, not only to change the subject but because he wanted to. He wanted to kiss him for a thousand reasons but none could come to mind - Kurt’s reaction was enough to convey that sentiment. “Oh.” It came out as a sigh, and the breath of a sentence lingered on both of their lips for a moment. The buzzing of the lights inside the barn had set into the background noise.

“I’m brilliant,” Blaine grinned and kissed his boyfriend on the cheek. “Absolutely brilliant,” another placed on the opposite, and then hastily on his chin, and then his forehead. He held him as if they were about to waltz, and Kurt giggled in a melody unmatched by the crackling radio behind the wooden walls a few yards away. “You’re brilliant.”

Kurt blushed in the steadily growing light of the moon. “I try.” He bit his bottom lip, wished it was between someone else’s teeth. They had both forgotten the looming structure behind them for a moment, concerned purely with the movements of each other’s eyelashes and the way ones palm felt in his. “Speaking of trying…” Kurt spun out, maintaining his grip on Blaine’s hand all the while, and, with an air of pride, drew him over to the barn doors.

He rolled them back with ease, clearly light with the oppression of age and weathering, and revealed something from a Romantic poem. Although the barn remained largely unused, in one corner stall Kurt had set up an array of blankets and string lights, a few lanterns filling the space with a blistering but soothing light. A sleeping bag had been split open as a base for his organised madness; wildflowers, clearly taken from the gardens surrounding his home, had been plucked and tied together and placed carefully around the area; haybales sealed them in and gave them a platform above the inlaid den. It was cosy. Kurt had made something perfectly warm and cosy and… Blaine was intangibly grateful. 

“How long did this take you?” It was the only question Blaine could think of as Kurt led him further into the barn, rolling the doors shut behind them. He noticed then that he had opened the hatches serving as rudimentary windows around the barn, allowing the cool evening air to flow in and out of the room. Kurt let go of his hand to enter the stall, perching on one of the picnic blanket-covered haybales he had positioned around the edge of the smaller room and gestured for Blaine to join him, but he didn’t - he stood in awe. 

“Oh, uh, only… a few hours.” Suddenly Blaine’s eyes left their surroundings to fix on Kurt with a look of shock, and a hint of disapproval.

“Kurt…” Of course, he interrupted before Blaine’s worrying could set in.

“It’s okay! I wanted to do it.” Kurt patted the space on the blanket next to him, but instead of sitting on the hay, Blaine let himself settle onto the downy floor, surprisingly comfortable amongst the layers of quilts and fleece Kurt had arranged for them. “I had to do a couple of trips in the car to get everything out here but… it was worth it. To see you smile like that.” Kurt slid down next to him, lacing his arm through the crook of Blaine’s elbow and letting his hand rest on the inside of the other boy’s shin. 

Their eyes met, then, and the air was soft, the smiles were too much to contain.

“I love you,” Blaine began, taking Kurt’s face in his hands and peppering his face with kisses in the way he might’ve in some fantastic dream from months ago. He couldn’t contain that love anymore; he wasn’t sure how he was going to do it come September. “I love you so much. I love you.” Kurt didn’t remove his hand from Blaine’s leg, but shifted it higher, to the concave of his knee, and held it with a firmer grip as he swotted the boy away from him with false intent. He was laughing now.

“Stop it, God, you’re gross,” he had managed to place that free hand over Blaine’s mouth, and the laughter was subdued fast enough until there sat just two boys smiling at each other. Kurt’s hand shifted to the back of his neck and he finally moved the other to the hem of Blaine’s shirt, giving himself permission to slide his fingertips onto the skin beneath. He didn’t miss the way Blaine swallowed as his skin made contact with his.

“So, what are we… uh…” It was horribly cliché, really. Kurt’s hand shifted upwards minutely the moment Blaine’s eyes danced down to his lips. Both felt their faces heat up but would be glad to know they didn’t blush - they were already pink enough, bubbly and drunk on some invisible emotion in the air.

“I thought we could just, um, be… close.” For a second it was sharp, the idea that in numbered days Kurt and Blaine would no longer be together, that Kurt wouldn’t be exactly where he expected him to be. For now, though, he kissed him, deeper and harder than usual, and felt his bones seep back into his flesh. He was here, and he loved him.

“Yeah, that sounds…” Blaine had only pulled back for a moment before Kurt was kissing his neck. “That sounds… good.” 

They continued much as expected, the food and drinks Kurt had brought with him forgotten in a cooler by the stall door until both were at varying stages of undress (Kurt wasn’t as anxious about the whole being-shirtless-technically-outside thing as he thought he’d be, and Blaine had been glad he’d gone with a simple button-down as opposed to a more tragically complicated affair.) Of course, Blaine was flat on his back, Kurt crouched over him in parallel and marvelling at the way he smiled under his lips, the way the salt of his skin stung his tongue. Both had lost themselves and found each other, absolved of guilt and fear for one fleeting cosmic moment.

“Kurt…”

“Don’t call me Kurt,” The response was quick, almost automatic, and only took a moment away from Blaine’s skin. The way Kurt had said it made it sound obvious, but Blaine’s playful curiosity was acting up in the absence of his oppressive anxiety.

“What?” It was a confused gasp more than a coherent word, really.

“I don’t know, call me…” Kurt sat halfway up, leant back on his haunches, and he loved the way Blaine’s hands found his forearms as if to stop him from straying too far. “Call me yours,” he leant back over him, nose just brushing against Blaine’s. “I’m yours.” Kurt thought that sentiment had ended the conversation and went back to kissing along Blaine’s collarbone until he heard Blaine’s confused voice above the haze of what he was doing.

“So… you want me to call you mine?”

Kurt sighed. “No, I-”

“How about,” Blaine put a finger up, silencing Kurt - usually, Kurt was all he wanted to hear, but he liked this initiative. He liked his boyfriend’s voice more than he knew, though not as much as his dubious ideas. “How about I call you Blaine, short for Blaine’s, and you call me Kurt, short for Kurt’s? I think that’s nice.” 

“You’re perfect, Kurt,” said Kurt, with a melody in his voice. He brushed his thumb along Blaine’s jaw and kissed him on the mouth, letting whatever he was holding in his shoulders escape him. 

“No one’s perfect, Blaine,” He replied, looking at the boy perched on top of him. He was illuminated here, and Blaine felt time slow down. This was it - their moment. This was the moment he would remember as either the most perfect night of his life or an image of what could’ve been. The mist was visible to Kurt, and so he interrupted the thought.

“Maybe not, but you’re perfect to me.”

“And you,” He splayed a hand against the back of his neck, gathering up the small soft hairs that lay flat there between his fingers and teasing through them gently. “Are everything to me.”

Outside the barn, the sky was vast and blank, and yet heavy with the burden of a thousand lights - they felt as though the stars never stopped rising that night. 


End file.
